^AMr^  l?_rAl         HELL 


POEMS 


FRANCIS    THOMPSON 


Four  hundred  and  ffty  copies 
of  this  book  printed  on  Van 
Gelder  hand-made  paper  and 
the  type  distributed. 


OEMS    BY 

FRANCIS 
THOMPSON 


PORTLAND    MAINE 
THOMAS    B    MOSHER 
MDCCCCXI 


COPYRIGHT 

THOMAS  B  MOSHER 

191I 


CONTENTS 


FOREWORD    ..... 
A    WORD    ON    FRANCIS    THOMPSON   . 

BY    ARTHUR    SYMONS 
DEDICATION  .... 

TO  WILFRID  AND  ALICE  MEYNELL 


PAGB 

ix 
xvii 


Love  in  Dian's  Lap 

i  before  her  portrait  in  youth 

ii  to  a  poet  breaking  silence 

iii  manus  animam  pinxit 

iv  a  carrier-song 

v  scala  jacobi  portaque  eburnea 

vi  gilded  gold        .... 

vii  her  portrait      .... 


EPILOGUE 


Miscellaneous  Poems 

to  the  dead  cardinal  of  westminster 

a  fallen  yew    

dream-tryst        .         .         .         . 
a  corymbus  for  autumn   . 


7 
lO 

13 
16 

20 

21 

23 
29 


35 
43 
47 
48 


CONTENTS 


THE  HOUND  OF  HEAVEN 
A  JUDGMENT  IN  HEAVEN 
EPILOGUE       . 


54 

6i 
66 


Poems  on  Children 


DAISY  ..... 
the    making    of    VIOLA 
TO    MY    godchild 

the  poppy  .  .  .  . 

TO    MONICA    THOUGHT    DYING 


7^ 

74 

78 

81 

8s 


Odes 


I       VICTORIAN    ODE       . 
II       THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 
III       CECIL    RHODES 


91 

100 

107 


FOREWORD 


Go,  songs,  for  ended  is  our  brief,  sweet  play  ; 

Go,  children  of  swift  joy  and  tardy  sorrow  : 
And  some  are  sung,  and  that  was  yesterday, 

A  nd  some  unsung,  and  that  may  be  to-morrow. 

Go  forth  ;  and  if  it  be  o'er  stony  way, 
Old  joy  can  lend  what  newer  grief  must  borrow  : 

And  it  was  sweet,  and  that  was  yesterday, 
A  nd  sweet  it  sweet,  though  purchased  with  sorrow. 

Go,  songs,  and  come  not  back  from  your  far  way  : 
And  if  men  ask  you  why  ye  smile  and  sorrow, 

Tell  them  ye  grieve ,  for  your  hearts  know  To-day, 
Tell  them  ye  smile,  for  your  eyes  knozu  To-morrow. 

Envoy  to  New  Poems,  i8gj. 


T 


FOREWORD 
I 

HE  great  white  highway  of  Literature^  we  can- 
not too  often  recall,  becomes  at  times  a  veritable 
via  dolorosa  strewn  with  bones  of  pilgrims  who,  such 
is  the  tragic  comedy  of  the  artistic  temperament,  "  went 
miserably  astray  in  the  twilight.  ^^  To  cite  five  modem 
instances  only,  the  world  of  Letters  has  seen  within  two 
decades  quick  confusion  come  upon  jfames  Thomson, 
"B.  v.,"  Ernest  Dowson,  Oscar  Wilde,  Simeon  Sol- 
omon ;  last  of  all  Francis  Thompson  who  assuredly  in 
name  and  fame  was  not  least  in  this  list  of  the  brother- 
hood "  of  celestial  vision.  ""^ 

Francis  Thompson,^*-  born  at  Preston,  i8^g,  the  son 
of  a  doctor  afterwards  in  practice  at  Ashton-under- 
Lyne,'^  died  of  tuberculosis  in  a  LLondon  hospital, 
November  ij,  igoy,  "  at  dawn  —  the  dawn  that  was 
the  death-hour  in  his  poem  Dream-Tryst."^ 

I  See  articles  by  Mr.  Wilfrid  Meynell  in  The  Athenzeum 
for  November  23,  igoy,  {since  reprinted  as  a  biographical  note 
to  the  Selected  Poems,  igo8),  and  Mr.  Wilfrid  Scawen  Blunt 
in  The  Academy  under  same  date.  It  has  been  annotcnced 
that  Mr.  Everard  Meynell  was  engaged  upon  a  life  of  Thomp- 
son^ which  at  present  is  not  forthcoming.  One  of  the  sanest 
critical  estimates  of  the  poet  is  given  in  Poets  of  the  Younger 
Generation  by  William  Archer,  igo2. 

ix 


FOREWORD 

The  pity  of  such  a  life  is  summed  up  in  a  single 
poignant  line  .•  "  '  Twas  but  a  piece  of  childhood  thrown 
awayy  Well  might  this  latest  victim  of  unmerciful 
disaster  have  said  in  all  sad  sincerity : 

"  Farewell ! 
Nor  grieve  that  I  ere  you  to  quiet  rest  have  wouy 
Rather  with  me  rejoice  !  " 

II 

Turn  to  what  ^^  great  verse  ^^  Francis  Thompson  has 
left  "  unto  a  little  clan.''  His  earliest  book,  which  we 
here  reprint  entire  with  the  addition  of  three  hitherto 
uncollected  Odes,  was  simply  entitled  Poems,  i8g3, 
followed  by  Sister-Songs :  An  Offering  to  Two  Sis- 
ters, i8gs^  ^^ew  Poems,  iSgy,  and  Selected  Poems, 
igo8.  In  the  capacity  of  reviewer  and  essayist  a  con- 
siderable body  of  prose  remains  scattered  about  in  The 
Academy  and  The  Athenaeum  and  possibly  a  few 
other  literary  journals,^  A  brief  booklet  entitled 
Health  and  Holiness,  igo^,  and  his  posthumous 
Essay  on  Shelley,  igog,  with  a  life  of  Saint  Ignatius 
Loyola,  igog,  would  seem  to  complete  the  sum  of 
Thompson's  labours? 

1  These  or  the  bulk  of  them  are  given  in  A  Renegade  Poet 
and  Other  Essays  by  Francis  Thompson  with  an  introduction 
by  Edward  J.  O'Brien,  Boston,  igio. 

2  Among  uncollected  poems  there  are  two  for  October^  ^^QS^ 
and  June,  i8g6,  reprinted  in  The  Catholic  World,  for  Feb- 
ruary, igo8,  which  also  contains  a  fine  friendly  appreciation 
by  Father  Gerrard  who  knew  Thompson  personally. 


FOREWORD 


III 


If  the  first  appraisers  of  Thompson's  three  books  of 
song  were  not  wholly  disposed  to  accept  Coventry  Pat- 
more' s  generous  estimate  ^  of  his  work  there  is  no  lack 
to-day  of  voices  crying  aloud  the  merits  of  the  dead 
master.  Conceivably  the  poet  might  be  made  to  suffer 
from  the  praises  of  a  coterie  whose  critical  judgment 
is  of  small  consequence  in  any  lasting  audit.  Some- 
thing far  other  than  the  fantastic  fanfares  of  perverted 
poetizing  must  be  sought  and  found  if  their  writer's 
fame  is  to  remain  secure  against  assault. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  any  doubt  exists,  when  this 
superbly  gifted  poet  is  under  fairly  normal  conditions 
and  has  the  Muse  within  control,  what  we  have  to  offer 
should  settle  it  forever.  Surely,  if  we  seek  the  lyric  cry 
it  is  here.  Take  the  poem  called  Daisy  :  it  has  an 
atmosphere  sought  for  in  vain  outside  of  Wordsworth 
and  George  Meredith.  The  same  can  be  truthfully 
said  of  Dream-Tryst,  To  My  Godchild,  and  The 
Poppy.  As  for  The  Hound  of  Heaven  and  To  the 
Dead  Cardinal  of  Westminster  they  need  no  praise  of 
ours ;  mystical  they  may  be  and  are,  but  even  so,  even 
if  alloy  has  been  added  to  the  virgin  gold,  it  has  been 
added  simply  that  the  work  be  done  at  all:  especially 
true  is  this  of  the  first  named  poem. 

Browning  divulged  the  secret  process  when  at  the 
beginning  <?/  The  Ring  and  the   Book  he  told  us, 

I  In  the  Fortnightly  Review /(7r  January,  iSg^.. 
xi 


FOREWORD 

"  There  'j  one  tricky 
(Craftsmen  instruct  me)  one  approved  device 
And  but  one.  Jits  suck  slivers  of  pure  gold 
As  this  was,  —  such  mere  oozings  from  the  mine^ 

^'•But  his  work  ended,  once  the  thing  a  ring, 
Oh,  there 's  repristination  !    fust  a  spirt 
(9'  the  proper  fiery  acid  der  its  face. 
And  forth  the  alloy  unfastened  flies  in  fume  ; 
While,  self-sufficient  now,  the  shape  remains, 
The  rondure  brave,  the  lilted  loz<eliness. 
Gold  as  it  was,  is,  shall  be  evermore.''^ 

IV 

It  is  inevitable,  perhaps,  that  a  diversity  of  opinion 
will  remain  when  all  is  said  fairly  and  freely  —  a 
perversity,  rather,  as  some  of  Thompson^ s  friends  may 
urge  —  concerning  a  songsmith  of  such  unique  endow- 
ments. But  poetry,  if  it  is  great  is  not  to  be  wrapped 
up  in  the  cerements  of  any  religion,  Jewish  or  Gentile ; 
to  deliver  its  message  to  mankind  it  must  come  in  its 
own  divine  right  —  naked  and  alone  /  It  is  not 
enough  either,  to  affirm  that  Thompson  possessed  the 
cosmic  vision.  If  he  did,  all  we  can  say  is  that  the 
cosmos  revealed  itself  to  him  as  through  a  glass  darkly. 
One  must  perforce  still  ask:  will  verse  of  this  esoteric 
aloofness  ever  become  widely  known  and  accepted  of 
men  ?  In  view  of  the  contumely  which  ofttimes  con- 
fronts those  who  have  fallen  upon  the  evil  days  of 
popularity  we  do  not  know  that  his  admirers  would 

xii 


I 


FOREWORD 

even  wish  it.  He  was  one  of  the  world^s  wastrels^ but 
"  the  general  mist  of  error  ^^  which  wrought  such  havoc 
in  his  life  is  at  an  end.  It  may  even  come  to  pass  that 
Mr.  George  Meredith^ s  testimony  at  the  poefs  graveside 
will  serve  as  his  epitaph  and  the  world^s  estimate  in 
one :  "  A  true  poet,  one  of  a  small  band.^^  To  speak 
as  Shelley  spoke :  "  He  has  outsoared  the  shadow  of 
our  night,^^  and'''-  is  secure,  and  now  can  never  mourn.'^ 


A  few  words  as  to  Thompson's  kinship  with  certain 
great  jfacobean  poets  and  we  have  done.  For  one 
thing  he  was  a  iveaver  of  imperial  purple.  Take  three 
brief  passages  like  these : 

"  And  all  malt's  Babylons  strive  but  to  impart 
The  grandeurs  of  his  Babylonian  heart.'*^ 

"  How  many  Ninevehs  and  Hecatompyloi, 
And  perished  cities  whose  great  phantasmata 
O^erbrow  the  silent  citizens  of  Dis.''^ 

"  The  fiery  pomps,  brave  exhalations, 
And  all  the  glistering  shows  o''  the  seeming  world. 
Which  the  sight  aches  at,  we  unwinking  see 
Through  the  smoked  glass  of  Death. ^^ 

From  Sister- Songs  the  following  lines  read  like  a 
sestet  out  of  some  lost  sonnet  by  Michelangelo : 

"  Yea,  ere  Saturnian  earth  her  child  consumes. 
And  I  lie  down  with  outworn  ossuaries, 

xiii 


FOREWORD 

Ere  death's  grim  tongue  anticipates  the  tomb's 
Siste  viator,  iti  this  storied  urn 
My  living  heart  is  laid  to  throb  and  burn, 

Till  end  be  ended,  and  till  ceasing  ceased 

Now  consider  what  the  earlier  poets  had  to  say  con- 
cerning Death  : 

'■'■''Tis  of  all  sleeps  the  sweetest : 
Children  begin  it  to  us,  strong  7nen  seek  it. 
And  kings  from  height  of  all  their  painted  glory 
Fall  like  spent  exhalations  to  this  centre.^'' 

"  '  Tis  less  than  to  be  born  ;  a  lasting  sleep  ; 

A  quiet  resting  from  all  jealousy  ; 

A  thing  we  all  pursue  ;  I  know,  besides. 

It  is  but  giving  over  of  a  game 

That  must  be  lost^ 

"  We  cease  to  grieve,  cease  to  be  fortune' s  slaves. 
Yea,  cease  to  die,  by  dying." 

With  these  funereal  pomps  let  us  compare  the  final 
lines  in  Thompson's  An  Anthem  of  Earth  and  so  take 
leave  of  him  : 

"  Now,  mortal-sonlike, 
I  thou  hast  suckled,  Mother,  I  at  last 
Shall  sustenant  be  to  thee.     Here  I  untrammel. 
Here  I  pluck  loose  the  body's  cerementing. 
And  break  the  tomb  of  life  ;  here  I  shake  off 
The  bur  o'  the  world,  man's  congregations  shun, 
And  to  the  antique  order  of  the  dead 
I  take  the  tongueless  voivs :  my  cell  is  set 
Here  in  thy  bosom  ;  my  little  trouble  is  ended 
In  a  little  peace." 

T.    B.    M. 


A  WORD  ON  FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

From  The  Saturday  Review^  November  23,  1907 


Slain  by  life,  Francis  Thompson  is  no  more.  He  is  now 
one  with  the  noble  company  of  poets  of  whom  the  world 
was  not  worthy.  ...  I  have  said  he  was  slain  by  life,  and 
it  is  the  simple  truth,  for  life  is  coarse  and  clumsy  when 
it  touches  a  soul  made  of  coloured  mist  and  airy  fire.  .  .  . 
Francis  Thompson  was  a  spiritual  exile.  .  .  .  He  endured 
unimaginable  squalors.  .  .  .  Like  De  Quincey,  he  knew 
Oxford  street  for  a  stony-hearted  stepmother.  Like  De 
Quincey  he  wandered  through  the  London  streets  by 
night  and  in  one  of  his  poems  [see  Sister-Songs,  Part  I, 
Section  8,]  he  hints  at  a  story  which  recalls  the  romance  of 
De  Quincey  and  Ann.  .  .  . 

Thompson's  poetry  is  a  "  wassail  of  orgiac  imageries." 
He  is  a  poet's  poet,  like  Shelley  and  Blake.  In  order  to 
follow  him  as  he  soars  from  image  to  image  and  symbol  to 
symbol,  you  must  have  the  rare  wings  of  imagination.  His 
masterpiece.  The  Hound  of  Heaven,  is  molten  white  with 
the  passion  of  the  imaginative  conscience,  the  anguish  of 
the  soul  that  flies  before  the  dim  vision  of  a  pursuing  God. 

This  gift  of  dreadful  vision  is  not  found  in  Crashaw  or 
in  Patmore,  in  Donne  or  in  Herbert,  and  therefore  it 
seems  to  me  that  Thompson  is  essentially  more  akin  to 
Blake,  Coleridge,  and  Rossetti  than  to  the  ecclesiastical 
mystics.  He  is  a  Twentieth  Century  mystic  with  a  Six- 
teenth Century  manner.  His  Latinisms,  his  neologisms, 
and  his  conceits  are  derivative  :  his  gorgeous  imagery  is 
his  own. 

JAMES  DOUGLAS. 


A  WORD  ON  FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

THE  news  comes  to  me  on  a  little  black-edged  card 
that  Francis  Thompson  died  at  dawn  on  ij 
November.  He  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  and  we  are 
asked  to  pray  for  his  soul.  It  was  a  light  that  death 
could  not  put  out,  a  torch  that  no  wind  could  blow  out 
in  the  darkness.  From  us  indeed  it  is  now  turned 
away,  and  that  little  corner  of  the  world  to  which  the 
poet  gives  light  is  darkened. 

For  Francis  Thompson  was  one  of  the  few  poets 
now  or  lately  living  in  whom  there  was  some  trace  of 
that  divine  essence  which  we  best  symbolise  by  fire. 
Emptinesses  he  had  and  extravagances ,  but  he  was  a 
poet,  and  he  had  made  of  many  influences  a  form  of 
new  beauty.  Much  of  his  speech,  which  has  a  heaped 
imagery  unique  in  our  time,  seems  to  have  learnt  its 
technique  from  an  almost  indiscriminate  quarrying 
among  old  quarries,  and  is  sometimes  so  closely  copied 
Jrom  that  which  was  fantastically  precise  in  Cra- 
shaw,  Donne,  Vaughan,  that  we  wonder  why  it  was 
not  a  few  centuries  ago  that  someone  said : 

xvii 


A  WORD  ON  FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

'"'■Life  is  a  coquetry 
Of  Death,  which  wearies  me. 
Too  sure 
Of  the  amour  ; 

A  tiring-room,  where  I 
Death^s  divers  garments  try, 
Tillft 
Some  fashion  sit^ 

No  one  since  that  time,  when  "  conceits  "  could  convey 
poetical  substance^  has  touched  so  daintily  on  plain 
words ^  giving  by  the  touch  some  transfiguring  novelty. 
If  it  was  a  style  learnt^  it  was  a  style  perfectly 
acquired^  and  at  times  equal  to  its  original. 

Words  and  cadences  must  have  had  an  intoxica- 
tion for  him,  the  intoxication  of  the  scholar ;  and 
"  cloudy  trophies  "  were  continually  falling  into  his 
hands,  and  half  through  them,  in  his  hurry  to  seize 
and  brandish  them.  He  swung  a  rare  incense  in  a 
censer  of  gold,  under  the  vault  of  a  chapel  where 
he  had  hung  votive  offerings.  The  incense  half 
obscures  the  offerings,  and  the  dim  figures  of  the 
saints  painted  on  the  windows.  As  he  bows  there  in 
the  chapel  he  seems  to  himself  to  be  in  '•^reverberant 
Eden-ways  "  or  higher,  at  the  throne  of  heaven,  borne 
on  '■^plumes  night-tinctured,  englobed  and  cinctured 
of  saint  s.^^  Passing  beyond  the  world  he  finds  strange 

xviii 


A  WORD  ON   FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

shapes^  full  of  pomp  and  wearing  strange  crowns ; 
but  they  are  without  outline,  and  his  words  disguise 
decorate^  but  do  not  reveal  them. 

When  he  chanted  in  his  chapel  of  dreams,  the  airs 
were  often  airs  which  he  had  learnt  from  Crashaw 
and  from  Patmore.  They  came  to  life  again  when 
he  used  them,  afid  he  made  for  himself  a  music  ivhich 
was  part  strangely  familiar  and  part  his  own,  almost 
bewilderingly.  Such  reed-notes  and  such  orchestra- 
tion of  sound  were  heard  nowhere  else ;  and  people 
listened  to  the  music,  entranced  as  by  a  new  magic. 

When  he  put  these  dreams  and  this  music  into 
verse,  with  a  craft  which  he  had  perfected  for  his  own 
use,  the  poetry  was  for  the  most  part  a  splendid  rhet- 
oric, imaginative  and  passionless,  as  if  the  moods  went 
by,  wrapped  in  purple,  in  a  great  procession.  The 
Hound  of  Heaven  has  the  harmonies  of  a  symphony, 
and  there  are  delicacies  among  its  splendours,  and, 
among  instants  of  falsely  fanciful  sentiment,  such 
august  moments  as  this  : 

'■^ I  dimly  guess  what  Twie  in  mists  co7ifounds  ; 

Yet  ever  and  anon  a  trumpet  sounds 

From  the  hid  battlements  of  Eternity, 

Those  shaken  mists  a  space  unsettle,  then 

Round  the  half-glimpsed  turrets  slowly  wash  againP 

xix 


A  WORD  ON   FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

It  is  full  of  fine  and  significant  symbolism,  it  is  an 
elaborate  pageant  of  his  own  life,  with  all  its  miser- 
ies, heights,  relapses,  and  flight  after  some  eternity ; 
butf  as  he  writes  it,  it  turns  intellectual,  and  the  voice 
is  like  that  of  one  declaiming  his  confession.  It  was 
not  thus  that  Christina  Rossetti  let  us  overhear  a  few 
of  the  deepest  secrets  of  her  soul. 

The  genius  of  Francis  Thompson  was  oriental, 
exuberant  in  colour,  woven  into  elaborate  patterns, 
and  went  draped  in  old  silken  robes,  that  had  sur- 
vived many  dynasties.  The  spectacle  of  him  was  an 
enchantment ;  he  passed  like  a  wild  vagabond  of  the 
mind,  dazzling  our  sight.  He  had  no  message,  but  he 
dropt  sentences  by  the  way,  cries  of  joy  or  pity,  love  of 
children,  worship  of  the  Virgin  and  Saints  and  of 
those  who  were  patron  saints  to  him  on  earth ;  his 
voice  was  heard  like  a  wandering  music,  which  no  one 
heeded  for  what  it  said,  in  a  strange  tongue,  but  which 
came  troublingly  into  the  mind,  bringing  it  the  solace 
of  its  old ^  recaptured  melodies.  Other  poets  of  his  time 
have  had  deeper  things  to  say,  and  a  more  flawless 
beauty  ;1pthers  have  put  more  of  their  hearts  into  their 
song;  but  no  one  has  been  a  torch  waved  with  so  fltful 
a  splendour  over  the  gulfs  of  our  darkness. 

ARTHUR   SYMONS 


POEMS 


DEDICATION 

TO    WILFRID    AND    ALICE    MEYNELL 

IF  the  rose  in  meek  duty 
May  dedicate  humbly 
To  her  grower  the  beauty 

Wherewith  she  is  comely, 
If  the  mine  to  the  miner 

The  jewels  that  pined  in  it. 
Earth  to  diviner 

The  springs  he  divined  in  it, 
To  the  grapes  the  wine-pitcher 

Their  juice  that  was  crushed  in  it, 
Viol  to  its  witcher 

The  music  lay  hushed  in  it, 
If  the  lips  may  pay  Gladness 

In  laughters  she  wakened, 
And  the  heart  to  its  sadness 

Weeping  unslakened, 
If  the  hid  and  sealed  coffer. 

Whose  having  not  his  is, 
To  the  loosers  may  proffer 

Their  finding — here  this  is  ; 
Their  lives  if  all  livers 

To  the  Life  of  all  living. 
To  you,  O  dear  givers  I 

I  give  your  own  giving. 


LOVE  IN  DIAN'S  LAP 


BEFORE  HER  PORTRAIT  IN  YOUTH 


■■«« 


AS  lovers,  banished  from  their  lady's  face, 
And  hopeless  of  her  grace, 
Fashion  a  ghostly  sweetness  in  its  place, 

Fondly  adore 
Some  stealth-won  cast  attire  she  wore, 
A  kerchief,  or  a  glove : 
And  at  the  lover's  beck 
Into  the  glove  there  fleets  the  hand. 
Or  at  impetuous  command 
Up  from  the  kerchief  floats  the  virgin  neck : 
So  I,  in  very  lowlihead  of  love, — 
Too  shyly  reverencing 
To  let  one  thought's  light  footfall  smooth 
Tread  near  the  living,  consecrated  thing, — 

Treasure  me  thy  cast  youth. 
This  outworn  vesture,  tenantless  of  thee. 
Hath  yet  my  knee. 
For  that,  with  show  and  semblance  fair 
Of  the  past  Her 


Who  once  the  beautiful,  discarded  raiment  bare, 
It  cheateth  me. 
As  gale  to  gale  drifts  breath 
Of  blossoms'  death, 
So  dropping  down  the  years  from  hour  to  hour 

This  dead  youth's  scent  is  wafted  me  to-day  : 
I  sit,  and  from  the  fragrance  dream  the  flower. 
So,  then,  she  looked  (I  say) ; 
And  so  her  front  sunk  down 
Heavy  beneath  the  poet's  iron  crown  : 
On  her  mouth  museful-sweet 
(Even  as  the  twin  lips  meet) 
Did  thought  and  sadness  greet : 

Sighs 
In  those  mournful  eyes 
So  put  on  visibilities  ; 
As  viewless  ether  turns,  in  deep  on  deep,  to  dyes. 

Thus,  long  ago. 
She  kept  her  meditative  paces  slow 
Through  maiden  meads,  with  waved  shadow  and  gleam 
Of  locks  half-lifted  on  the  winds  of  dream. 
Till  love  up-caught  her  to  his  chariot's  glow. 
Yet,  voluntary,  happier  Proserpine ! 

This  drooping  flower  of  youth  thou  lettest  fall 
I,  faring  in  the  cockshut-light,  astray, 

Find  on  my  'lated  way, 
Andjstoop,  and  gather  for  memorial, 
And  lay  it  on  my  bosom,  and  make  it  mine. 
To  this,  the  all  of  love  the  stars  allow  me, 
I  dedicate  and  vow  me. 

8 


I  reach  back  through  the  days 
A  trothed  hand  to  the  dead  the  last  trump  shall  not  raise. 

The  water-wraith  that  cries 
From  those  eternal  sorrows  of  thy  pictured  eyes 
Entwines  and  draws  me  down  their  soundless  intricacies  ! 


II 

TO  A  POET  BREAKING   SILENCE 

TOO  wearily  had  we  and  song 
Been  left  to  look  and  left  to  long, 
Yea,  song  and  we  to  long  and  look. 
Since  thine  acquainted  feet  forsook 
The  mountain  where  the  Muses  hymn 
For  Sinai  and  the  Seraphim. 
Now  in  both  the  mountains'  shine 
Dress  thy  countenance,  twice  divine ! 
From  Moses  and  the  Muses  draw 
The  Tables  of  thy  double  Law ! 
His  rod-born  fount  and  Castaly 
Let  the  one  rock  bring  forth  for  thee, 
Renewing  so  from  either  spring 
The  songs  which  both  thy  countries  sing : 
Or  we  shall  fear  lest,  heavened  thus  long, 
Thou  should'st  forget  thy  native  song. 
And  mar  thy  mortal  melodies 
With  broken  stammer  of  the  skies. 


Ah !  let  the  sweet  birds  of  the  Lord 
With  earth's  waters  make  accord ; 
Teach  how  the  crucifix  may  be 
Carven  from  the  laurel-tree, 
Fruit  of  the  Hesperides 
Burnish  take  on  Eden-trees, 


The  Muses'  sacred  grove  be  wet 
With  the  red  dew  of  Olivet, 
And  Sappho  lay  her  burning  brows 
In  white  Cecilia's  lap  of  snows ! 

Thy  childhood  must  have  felt  the  stings 
Of  too  divine  o'ershadowings ; 
Its  odorous  heart  have  been  a  blossom 
That  in  darkness  did  unbosom, 
Those  fire-flies  of  God  to  invite. 
Burning  spirits,  which  by  night 
Bear  upon  their  laden  wing 
To  such  hearts  impregnating. 
For  flowers  that  night-wings  fertilize 
Mock  down  the  stars'  unsteady  eyes. 
And  with  a  happy,  sleepless  glance 
Gaze  the  moon  out  of  countenance. 
I  think  thy  girlhood's  watchers  must 
Have  took  thy  folded  songs  on  trust, 
And  felt  them,  as  one  feels  the  stir 
Of  still  lightnings  in  the  hair. 
When  conscious  hush  expects  the  cloud 
To  speak  the  golden  secret  loud 
Which  tacit  air  is  privy  to ; 
Flasked  in  the  grape  the  wine  they  knew, 
Ere  thy  poet-mouth  was  able 
For  its  first  young  starry  babble, 
Keep'st  thou  not  yet  that  subtle  grace  ? 
Yea,  in  this  silent  interspace, 
God  sets  His  poems  in  thy  face  1 

II 


The  loom  which  mortal  verse  affords, 
Out  of  weak  and  mortal  words, 
Wovest  thou  thy  singing-weed  in, 
To  a  rune  of  thy  far  Eden. 
Vain  are  all  disguises  !     ah. 
Heavenly  incognita  I 

Thy  mien  bewrayeth  through  that  wrong 
The  great  Uranian  House  of  Song  I 
As  the  vintages  of  earth 
Taste  of  the  sun  that  riped  their  birth, 
We  know  what  never  cadent  Sun 
Thy  lamped  clusters  throbbed  upon, 
What  plumed  feet  the  winepress  trod  ; 
Thy  wine  is  flavorous  of  God. 
Whatever  singing-robe  thou  wear 
Has  the  Paradisal  air ; 
And  some  gold  feather  it  has  kept 
Shows  what  Floor  it  lately  swept ! 


IS 


Ill 

"MANUS  ANIMAM  PINXIT  " 

LADY  who  hold'st  on  me  dominion ! 
Within  your  spirit's  arms  I  stay  me  fast 
Against  the  fell 
Immitigate  ravening  of  the  gates  of  hell ; 
And  claim  my  right  in  you,  most  hardly  won, 
Of  chaste  fidelity  upon  the  chaste : 
Hold  me  and  hold  by  me,  lest  both  should  fall 
(O  in  high  escalade  high  companion  !) 
Even  in  the  breach  of  Heaven's  assaulted  wall. 
Like  to  a  wind-sown  sapling  grow  I  from 
The  clift,  Sweet,  of  your  skyward-jetting  soul, — 
Shook  by  all  gusts  that  sweep  it,  overcome 
By  all  its  clouds  incumbent :  O  be  true 
To  your  soul,  dearest,  as  my  life  to  you ! 
For  if  that  soil  grow  sterile,  then  the  whole 
Of  me  must  shrivel,  from  the  topmost  shoot 
Of  climbing  poesy,  and  my  life,  killed  through. 
Dry  down  and  perish  to  the  foodless  root. 

Sweet  Summer !  unto  you  this  swallow  drew, 
By  secret  instincts  inappeasable, 

That  did  direct  him  well. 
Lured  from  his  gelid  North  which  wrought  him  wrong, 

Wintered  of  sunning  song;  — 
By  happy  instincts  inappeasable. 

Ah  yes !  that  led  him  well, 

»3 


Lured  to  the  untried  regions  and  the  new 

Climes  of  auspicious  you  ; 
To  twitter  there,  and  in  his  singing  dwell. 

But  ah  !  if  you,  my  Summer,  should  grow  waste, 

With  grieving  skies  o'ercast, 
For  such  migration  my  poor  wing  was  strong 
But  once ;  it  has  no  power  to  fare  again 

Forth  o'er  the  heads  of  men, 
Nor  other  Summers  for  its  sanctuary : 

But  from  your  mind's  chilled  sky 
It  needs  must  drop,  and  lie  with  stiffened  wings 

Among  your  soul's  forlornest  things ; 
A  speck  upon  your  memory,  alack  ! 
A  dead  fly  in  a  dusty  window-crack. 

O  therefore  you  who  are 

What  words,  being  to  such  mysteries 

As  raiment  to  the  body  is. 

Should  rather  hide  than  tell ; 

Chaste  and  intelligential  love  : 
Whose  form  is  as  a  grove 
Hushed  with  the  cooing  of  an  unseen  dove ; 
Whose  spirit  to  my  touch  thrills  purer  far 
Than  is  the  tingling  of  a  silver  bell ; 
Whose  body  other  ladies  well  might  bear 
As  soul,  —  yea,  which  it  profanation  were 
For  all  but  you  to  take  as  fleshly  woof. 

Being  spirit  truest  proof ; 
Whose  spirit  sure  is  lineal  to  that 

Which  sang  Magnificat  : 

14 


Chastest,  since  such  you  are, 
Take  this  curbed  spirit  of  mine, 

Which  your  own  eyes  invest  with  light  divine. 

For  lofty  love  and  high  auxiliar 

In  daily  exalt  emprise 
Which  outsoars  mortal  eyes  ; 
This  soul  which  on  your  soul  is  laid, 
As  maid's  breast  against  breast  of  maid ; 

Beholding  how  your  own  I  have  engraved 

On  it,  and  with  what  purging  thoughts  have  laved 

This  love  of  mine  from  all  mortality. 

Indeed  the  copy  is  a  painful  one, 

And  with  long  labour  done ! 

O  if  you  doubt  the  thing  you  are,  lady, 
Come  then,  and  look  in  me ; 

Your  beauty,  Dian,  dress  and  contemplate 

Within  a  pool  to  Dian  consecrate ! 

Unveil  this  spirit,  lady,  when  you  will. 

For  unto  all  but  you  't  is  veiled  still : 

Unveil,  and  fearless  gaze  there,  you  alone. 

And  if  you  love  the  image  —  't  is  your  own  ! 


15 


IV 
A  CARRIER-SONG 


SINCE  you  have  waned  from  us, 
Fairest  of  women ! 
I  am  a  darkened  cage 

Song  cannot  hymn  in. 
My  songs  have  followed  you, 

Like  birds  the  summer ; 
Ah  !  bring  them  back  to  me. 
Swiftly,  dear  comer  1 
Seraphim^ 
Her  to  hymn^ 
Might  leave  their  portals  ; 
And  at  my  feet  learn 
The  harping  of  mortals  I 


II 


Where  wings  to  rustle  use. 

But  this  poor  tarrier — 
Searching  my  spirit's  eaves  — 

Find  I  for  carrier. 
Ah  1  bring  them  back  to  me 

Swiftly,  sweet  comer  I 
Swift,  swift,  and  bring  with  you 

Song's  Indian  summer  1 


Seraphim^ 

Her  to  hymn  J 

Might  leave  their  portals  ; 

And  at  my  feet  learn 

The  harping  of  mortals  I 

III 

Whereso  your  angel  is, 

My  angel  goeth ; 
I  am  left  guardianless, 

Paradise  knoweth ! 
I  have  no  Heaven  left 

To  weep  my  wrongs  to ; 
Heaven,  when  you  went  from  us, 
Went  with  my  songs  too. 
Seraphim^ 
Her  to  hymn. 
Might  leave  their  portals  ; 
And  at  my  feet  learn 
The  harping  of  mortals  I 


IV 


I  have  no  angels  left 
Now,  Sweet,  to  pray  to  : 

Where  you  have  made  your  shrine 
They  are  away  to. 

They  have  struck  Heaven's  tent, 
And  gone  to  cover  you  : 

17 


Whereso  you  keep  your  state 
Heaven  is  pitched  over  you  ! 
Seraphim^ 
Her  to  hymn, 
Might  leave  their  portals, 
And  at  my  feet  learn 
The  harping  of  mortals  / 


She  that  is  Heaven's  Queen 

Her  title  borrows, 
For  that  she  pitiful 

Beareth  our  sorrows. 
So  thou,  Regina  mi, 
Spes  infirmorum; 
With  all  our  grieving  crowned 
Mater  dolorum  I 
Seraphim, 
Her  to  hymn, 
Might  leave  their  portals. 
And  at  my  feet  learn 
The  harping  of  mortals  I 

VI 

Yet,  envious  coveter 

Of  other's  grieving  1 
This  lonely  longing  yet 

'Scapeth  your  reaving. 

i8 


Cruel !  to  take  from  a 
Sinner  his  Heaven ! 
Think  you  with  contrite  smiles 
To  be  forgiven  ? 
Seraphim, 
Her  to  hymn, 
Might  leave  their  portals  ; 
Aftd  at  my  feet  learn 
The  harping  of  mortals  / 

VII 

Penitent !  give  me  back 

Angels,  and  Heaven ; 

Render  your  stolen  self, 

And  be  forgiven  ! 
How  frontier  Heaven  from  you  ? 

For  my  soul  prays,  Sweet, 
Still  to  your  face  in  Heaven, 
Heaven  in  your  face,  Sweet  I 
Seraphim, 
Her  to  hymn, 
Might  leave  their  portals  ; 
And  at  my  feet  learn 
The  harping  of  mortals  I 


19 


SCALA  JACOBI  PORTAQUE  EBURNEA 

HER  soul  from  earth  to  Heaven  lies, 
Like  the  ladder  of  the  vision, 
Whereon  go 
To  and  fro, 
In  ascension  and  demission, 
Star-flecked  feet  of  Paradise. 

Now  she  is  drawn  up  from  me 
All  my  angels,  wet-eyed,  tristful, 

Gaze  from  great 

Heaven's  gate 
Like  pent  children,  very  wistful, 
That  below  a  playmate  see. 

Dream-dispensing  face  of  hers  ! 
Ivory  port  which  loosed  upon  me 

Wings,  I  wist, 

Whose  amethyst 
Trepidations  have  forgone  me, — 
Hesper's  filmy  traffickers ! 


20 


VI 

GILDED  GOLD 

THOU  dost  to  rich  attire  a  grace, 
To  let  it  deck  itself  with  thee, 
And  teachest  pomp  strange  cunning  ways 
To  be  thought  simplicity. 
But  lilies,  stolen  from  grassy  mold, 
No  more  curled  state  unfold 
Translated  to  a  vase  of  gold  ; 
In  burning  throne  though  they  keep  still 
Serenities  unthawed  and  chill. 
Therefore,  albeit  thou  'rt  stately  so. 
In  statelier  state  thou  us'dst  to  go. 

Though  jewels  should  phosphoric  burn 
Through  those  night-waters  of  thine  hair, 
A  flower  from  its  translucid  urn 
Poured  silver  flame  more  lunar-fair. 
These  futile  trappings  but  recall 
Degenerate  worshippers  who  fall 
In  purfled  kirtle  and  brocade 
To  'parel  the  white  Mother-Maid. 
For,  as  her  image  stood  arrayed 
In  vests  of  its  self-substance  wrought 
To  measure  of  the  sculptor's  thought  — 
Slurred  by  those  added  braveries  ; 
So  for  thy  spirit  did  devise 
Its  Maker  seemly  garniture, 

ai 


Of  its  own  essence  parcel  pure, — 
From  grave  simplicities  a  dress, 
And  reticent  demurenesses. 
And  love  encinctured  with  reserve ; 
Which  the  woven  vesture  should  subserve. 
For  outward  robes  in  their  ostents 
Should  show  the  soul's  habiliments. 
Therefore  I  say, — Thou  'rt  fair  even  so, 
But  better  Fair  I  use  to  know. 

The  violet  would  thy  dusk  hair  deck 

With  graces  like  thine  own  unsought. 

Ah !  but  such  place  would  daze  and  wreck 

Its  simple,  lowly  rustic  thought. 

For  so  advanced,  dear,  to  thee, 

It  would  unlearn  humility  ! 

Yet  do  not,  with  an  altered  look, 

In  these  weak  numbers  read  rebuke ; 

Which  are  but  jealous  lest  too  much 

God's  master-piece  thou  shouldst  retouch. 

Where  a  sweetness  is  complete. 

Add  not  sweets  unto  the  sweet ! 

Or,  as  thou  wilt,  for  others  so 

In  unfamiliar  richness  go ; 

But  keep  for  mine  acquainted  eyes 

The  fashions  of  thy  Paradise. 


22 


VII 
HER  PORTRAIT 

OH,  but  the  heavenly  grammar  did  I  hold 
Of  that  high  speech  which  angels'  tongues  turn  gold  ! 
So  should  her  deathless  beauty  take  no  wrong, 
Praised  in  her  own  great  kindred's  fit  and  cognate  tongue. 
Or  if  that  language  yet  with  us  abode 
Which  Adam  in  the  garden  talked  with  God ! 
But  our  untempered  speech  descends  —  poor  heirs  ! 
Grimy  and  rough-cast  still  from  Babel's  bricklayers  : 
Curse  on  the  brutish  jargon  we  inherit, 
Strong  but  to  damn,  not  memorise,  a  spirit  ! 
A  cheek,  a  lip,  a  limb,  a  bosom,  they 
Move  with  light  ease  in  speech  of  working-day ; 
And  women  we  do  use  to  praise  even  so. 
But  here  the  gates  we  burst,  and  to  the  temple  go. 
Their  praise  were  her  dispraise ;  who  dare,  who  dare, 
Adulate  the  seraphim  for  their  burning  hair? 
How,  if  with  them  I  dared,  here  should  I  dare  it  ? 
How  praise  the  woman,  who  but  know  the  spirit  ? 
How  praise  the  colour  of  her  eyes,  uncaught 
While  they  were  coloured  with  her  varying  thought  ? 
How  her  mouth's  shape,  who  only  use  to  know 
What  tender  shape  her  speech  will  fit  it  to .? 
Or  her  lips'  redness,  when  their  joined  veil 
Song's  fervid  hand  has  parted  till  it  wore  them  pale  ? 

If  I  would  praise  her  soul  (temerarious  if !), 
All  must  be  mystery  and  hieroglyph. 

23 


Heaven,  which  not  oft  is  prodigal  of  its  more 

To  singers,  in  their  song  too  great  before ; 

By  which  the  hierarch  of  large  poesy  is 

Restrained  to  his  once  sacred  benefice ; 

Only  for  her  the  salutary  awe 

Relaxes  and  stern  canon  of  its  law ; 

To  her  alone  concedes  pluralities. 

In  her  alone  to  reconcile  agrees 

The  Muse,  the  Graces,  and  the  Charities ; 

To  her,  who  can  the  trust  so  well  conduct 

To  her  it  gives  the  use,  to  us  the  usufruct. 

What  of  the  dear  admin istress  then  may 

I  utter,  though  I  spoke  her  own  carved  perfect  way  ? 

What  of  her  daily  gracious  converse  known, 

Whose  heavenly  despotism  must  needs  dethrone 

And  subjugate  all  sweetness  but  its  own  ? 

Deep  in  my  heart  subsides  the  infrequent  word. 

And  there  dies  slowly  throbbing  like  a  wounded  bird. 

What  of  her  silence,  that  outsweetens  speech  ? 

What  of  her  thoughts,  high  marks  for  mine  own  thoughts  to  reach 

Yet  (Chaucer's  antique  sentence  so  to  turn). 

Most  gladly  will  she  teach,  and  gladly  learn  ; 

And  teaching  her,  by  her  enchanting  art, 

The  master  threefold  learns  for  all  he  can  impart. 

Now  all  is  said,  and  all  being  said,  —  aye  me  1 

There  yet  remains  unsaid  the  very  She. 

Nay,  to  conclude  (so  to  conclude  I  dare), 

If  of  her  virtues  you  evade  the  snare, 

Then  for  her  faults  you  *11  fall  in  love  with  her. 

24 


Alas,  and  I  have  spoken  of  her  Muse  — 

Her  Muse,  that  died  with  her  auroral  dews ! 

Learn,  the  wise  cherubim  from  harps  of  gold 

Seduce  a  trepidating  music  manifold ; 

But  the  superior  seraphim  do  know 

None  other  music  but  to  flame  and  glow. 

So  she  first  lighted  on  our  frosty  earth, 

A  sad  musician,  of  cherubic  birth, 

Playing  to  alien  ears  —  which  did  not  prize 

The  uncomprehended  music  of  the  skies  — 

The  exiled  airs  of  her  far  Paradise. 

But  soon  from  her  own  harpings  taking  fire, 

In  love  and  light  her  melodies  expire. 

Now  Heaven  affords  her,  for  her  silenced  hymn, 

A  double  portion  of  the  seraphim. 

At  the  rich  odours  from  her  heart  that  rise. 
My  soul  remembers  its  lost  Paradise, 
And  antenatal  gales  blow  from  Heaven's  shores  of  spice ; 
I  grow  essential  all,  uncloaking  me 
From  this  encumbering  virility. 
And  feel  the  primal  sex  of  heaven  and  poetry : 
And  parting  from  her,  in  me  linger  on 
Vague  snatches  of  Uranian  antiphon. 

How  to  the  petty  prison  could  she  shrink 
Of  femineity  ?  —  Nay,  but  I  think 
In  a  dear  courtesy  her  spirit  would 
Woman  assume,  for  grace  to  womanhood. 

25 


Or,  votaress  to  the  virgin  Sanctitude 

Of  reticent  withdrawal's  sweet,  courted  pale, 

She  took  the  cloistral  flesh,  the  sexual  veil, 

Of  her  sad,  aboriginal  sisterhood  ; 

The  habit  of  cloistral  flesh  which  founding  Eve  indued. 

Thus  do  I  know  her  :  but  for  what  men  call 
Beauty  —  the  loveliness  corporeal, 
Its  most  just  praise  a  thing  unproper  were 
To  singer  or  to  listener,  me  or  her. 
She  wears  that  body  but  as  one  indues 
A  robe,  half  careless,  for  it  is  the  use ; 
Although  her  soul  and  it  so  fair  agree, 
We  sure  may,  unattaint  of  heresy, 
Conceit  it  might  the  soul's  begetter  be. 
The  immortal  could  we  cease  to  contemplate, 
The  mortal  part  suggests  its  every  trait. 
God  laid  His  fingers  on  the  ivories 
Of  her  pure  members  as  on  smoothed  keys, 
And  there  out-breathed  her  spirit's  harmonies. 
I  '11  speak  a  little  proudly  :  —  I  disdain 
To  count  the  beauty  worth  my  wish  or  gain. 
Which  the  dull  daily  fool  can  covet  or  obtain. 
I  do  confess  the  fairness  of  the  spoil, 
But  from  such  rivalry  it  takes  a  soil. 
For  her  I  '11  proudlier  speak  :  —  how  could  it  be 
That  I  should  praise  the  gilding  on  the  psaltery  ? 
'T  is  not  for  her  to  hold  that  prize  a  prize. 
Or  praise  much  praise,  though  proudest  in  its  wise, 
To  which  even  hopes  of  merely  women  rise. 

26 


I 


Such  strife  would  to  the  vanquished  laurels  yield, 

Against  her  suffered  to  have  lost  a  field. 

Herself  must  with  herself  be  sole  compeer, 

Unless  the  people  of  her  distant  sphere 

Some  gold  migration  send  to  melodise  the  year. 

But  first  our  hearts  must  burn  in  larger  guise, 

To  reformate  the  uncharitable  skies, 

And  so  the  deathless  plumage  to  acclimatise  : 

Since  this,  their  sole  congener  in  our  clime. 

Droops  her  sad,  ruffled  thoughts  for  half  the  shivering  time. 

Yet  I  have  felt  what  terrors  may  consort 
In  women's  cheeks,  the  Graces'  soft  resort ; 
My  hand  hath  shook  at  gentle  hands'  access. 
And  trembled  at  the  waving  of  a  tress  ; 
My  blood  known  panic  fear,  and  fled  dismayed. 
Where  ladies'  eyes  have  set  their  ambuscade. 
The  rustle  of  a  robe  hath  been  to  me 
The  very  rattle  of  love's  musketry ; 
Although  my  heart  hath  beat  the  loud  advance, 
I  have  recoiled  before  a  challenging  glance, 
Proved  gay  alarms  where  warlike  ribbons  dance. 
And  from  it  all,  this  knowledge  have  I  got, — 
The  whole  that  others  have,  is  less  than  they  have  not ; 
All  which  makes  other  women  noted  fair. 
Unnoted  would  remain  and  overshone  in  her. 

How  should  I  gauge  what  beauty  is  her  dole, 
Who  cannot  see  her  countenance  for  her  soul ; 
As  birds  see  not  the  casement  for  the  sky  ? 

*7 


And  as  't  is  check  they  prove  its  presence  by, 

I  know  not  of  her  body  till  I  find 

My  flight  debarred  the  heaven  of  her  mind. 

Hers  is  the  face  whence  all  should  copied  be, 

Did  God  make  replicas  of  such  as  she ; 

Its  presence  felt  by  what  it  does  abate, 

Because  the  soul  shines  through  tempered  and  mitigate  : 

Where  —  as  a  figure  labouring  at  night 

Beside  the  body  of  a  splendid  light  — 

Dark  Time  works  hidden  by  its  luminousness ; 

And  every  line  he  labours  to  impress 

Turns  added  beauty,  like  the  veins  that  run 

Athwart  a  leaf  which  hangs  against  the  sun. 

There  regent  Melancholy  wide  controls ; 

There  Earth-  and  Heaven-Love  play  for  aureoles ; 

There  Sweetness  out  of  Sadness  breaks  at  fits, 

Like  bubbles  on  dark  water,  or  as  flits 

A  sudden  silver  fin  through  its  deep  infinites ; 

There  amorous  Thought  has  sucked  pale  Fancy's  breath, 

And  Tenderness  sits  looking  toward  the  lands  of  death  ; 

There  Feeling  stills  her  breathing  with  her  hand, 

And  Dream  from  Melancholy  part  wrests  the  wand  ; 

And  on  this  lady's  heart,  looked  you  so  deep. 

Poor  Poetry  has  rocked  himself  to  sleep : 

Upon  the  heavy  blossom  of  her  lips 

Hangs  the  bee  Musing ;  nigh  her  lids  eclipse 

Each  half-occulted  star  beneath  that  lies  ; 

And  in  the  contemplation  of  those  eyes. 

Passionless  passion,  wild  tranquillities. 

28 


EPILOGUE 

TO   THE   poet's    SITTER 

Wherein  he  excuseth  himself  for  the  manner  of  the  Portrait 

ALAS !  now  wilt  thou  chide,  and  say  (I  deem), 
My  figured  descant  hides  the  simple  theme  : 
Or  in  another  wise  reproving,  say 
I  ill  observe  thine  own  high  reticent  way. 
Oh,  pardon,  that  I  testify  of  thee 
What  thou  couldst  never  speak,  nor  others  be ! 

Yet  (for  the  book  is  not  more  innocent 
Of  what  the  gazer's  eyes  makes  so  intent). 
She  will  but  smile,  perhaps,  that  I  find  my  fair 
Sufficing  scope  in  such  strait  theme  as  her. 
"  Bird  of  the  sun  !  the  stars'  wild  honey-bee  ! 
Is  your  gold  browsing  done  so  thoroughly  1 
Or  sinks  a  singed  wing  to  narrow  nest  in  me  ?  " 
(Thus  she  might  say :  for  not  this  lowly  vein 
Out-deprecates  her  deprecating  strain). 
Oh,  you  mistake,  dear  lady,  quite  ;  nor  know 
Ether  was  strict  as  you,  its  loftiness  as  low ! 

The  heavens  do  not  advance  their  majesty 
Over  their  marge ;  beyond  his  empery 
The  ensigns  of  the  wind  are  not  unfurled. 
His  reign  is  hooped  in  by  the  pale  o'  the  world. 

29 


I 


'T  is  not  the  continent,  but  the  contained, 

That  pleasaunce  makes  or  prison,  loose  or  chained. 

Too  much  alike  or  little  captives  me. 

For  all  oppression  is  captivity. 

What  groweth  to  its  height  demands  no  higher ; 

The  limit  limits  not,  but  the  desire. 

Give  but  my  spirit  its  desired  scope,  — 

A  giant  in  a  pismire,  I  not  grope ; 

Deny  it,  —  and  an  ant,  with  on  my  back 

A  firmament,  the  skiey  vault  will  crack. 

Our  minds  make  their  own  Termini,  nor  call 

The  issuing  circumscriptions  great  or  small ; 

So  high  constructing  Nature  lessons  to  us  all : 

Who  optics  gives  accommodate  to  see 

Your  countenance  large  as  looks  the  sun  to  be. 

And  distant  greatness  less  than  near  humanity. 

We,  therefore,  with  a  sure  instinctive  mind, 

An  equal  spaciousness  of  bondage  find 

In  confines  far  or  near,  of  air  or  our  own  kind. 

Our  looks  and  longings,  which  affront  the  stars, 

Most  richly  bruised  against  their  golden  bars. 

Delighted  captives  of  their  flaming  spears, 

Find  a  restraint  restrainless  which  appears 

As  that  is,  and  so  simply  natural, 

In  you  ;  —  the  fair  detention  freedom  call. 

And  overscroU  with  fancies  the  loved  prison-wall. 

Such  sweet  captivity,  and  only  such. 

In  you,  as  in  those  golden  bars,  we  touch ! 

30 


Our  gazes  for  sufficing  limits  know 

The  firmament  above,  your  face  below ; 

Our  longings  are  contented  with  the  skies, 

Contented  with  the  heaven,  and  your  eyes. 

My  restless  wings,  that  beat  the  whole  world  through. 

Flag  on  the  confines  of  the  sun  and  you  ; 

And  find  the  human  pale  remoter  of  the  two. 


31 


MISCELLANEOUS  POEMS 


TO  THE  DEAD  CARDINAL  OF 
WESTMINSTER 


WILL  not  perturbate 
Thy  Paradisal  state 
With  praise 
Of  thy  dead  days ; 

To  the  new-heavened  say, — 
"  Spirit,  thou  wert  fine  clay  :  " 
This  do, 
Thy  praise  who  knew. 

Therefore  my  spirit  dings 
Heaven's  porter  by  the  wings, 
And  holds 
Its  gated  golds 

Apart,  with  thee  to  press 
A  private  business ;  — 
Whence, 
Deign  me  audience. 

35 


Anchorite,  who  didst  dwell 
With  all  the  world  for  cell ! 
My  soul 
Round  me  doth  roll 

A  sequestration  bare. 
Too  far  alike  we  were, 
Too  far 
Dissimilar. 

For  its  burning  fruitage  I 
Do  climb  the  tree  o'  the  sky ; 
Do  prize 
Some  human  eyes. 

Vou  smelt  the  Heaven-blossoms, 
And  all  the  sweet  embosoms 
The  dear 
Uranian  year. 

Those  Eyes  my  weak  gaze  shuns, 
Which  to  the  suns  are  Suns, 
Did 
Not  affray  your  lid. 

The  carpet  was  let  down 
(With  golden  moultings  strown) 
For  you 
Of  the  angels'  blue. 

36 


i 


But  I,  ex-Paradised, 
The  shoulder  of  your  Christ 
Find  high 
To  lean  thereby. 

So  flaps  my  helpless  sail, 
Bellying  with  neither  gale, 
Of  Heaven 
Nor  Orcus  even. 

Life  is  a  coquetry 
Of  Death,  which  wearies  me, 
Too  sure 
Of  the  amour ; 

A  tiring-room  where  I 
Death's  divers  garments  try, 
Till  fit 
Some  fashion  sit. 

It  seemeth  me  too  much 
I  do  rehearse  for  such 
A  mean 
And  single  scene. 

The  sandy  glass  hence  bear  - 
Antique  remembrancer ; 
My  veins 
Do  spare  its  pains. 

37 


With  secret  sympathy 
My  thoughts  repeat  in  me 
Infirm 
The  turn  o'  the  worm 

Beneath  my  appointed  sod ; 
The  grave  is  in  my  blood ; 
I  shake 
To  winds  that  take 

Its  grasses  by  the  top ; 
The  rains  thereon  that  drop 
Perturb 
With  drip  acerb 

My  subtly  answering  soul ; 
The  feet  across  its  knoll 
Do  jar 
Me  from  afar. 

As  sap  foretastes  the  spring ; 
As  Earth  ere  blossoming 
Thrills 
With  far  daffodils, 

And  feels  her  breast  turn  sweet 
With  the  unconceivbd  wheat ; 
So  doth 
My  flesh  foreloathe 

•38 


The  abhorrM  spring  of  Dis, 
With  seething  presciences 
Affirm 
The  preparate  worm. 

I  have  no  thought  that  I, 
When  at  the  last  I  die, 
Shall  reach 
To  gain  your  speech. 

But  you,  should  that  be  so, 
May  very  well,  I  know. 
May  well 
To  me  in  hell 

With  recognising  eyes 
Look  from  your  Paradise  — 
"  God  bless 
Thy  hopelessness ! " 

Call,  holy  soul,  O  call 
The  hosts  angelical, 
And  say, — 
"  See,  far  away 

"  Lies  one  I  saw  on  earth  ; 
One  stricken  from  his  birth 
With  curse 
Of  destinate  verse. 

39 


"  What  place  doth  He  ye  serve 
For  such  sad  spirit  reserve, — 
Given, 
In  dark  lieu  of  Heaven, 

"The  impitiable  Daemon, 
Beauty,  to  adore  and  dream  on, 
To  be 
Perpetually 

"  Hers,  but  she  never  his  ? 
He  reapeth  miseries, 
Foreknows 
His  wages  woes ; 

"  He  lives  detached  days ; 
He  serveth  not  for  praise ; 
For  gold 
He  is  not  sold ; 

"  Deaf  is  he  to  world's  tongue ; 
He  scorn eth  for  his  song 
The  loud 
Shouts  of  the  crowd ; 

"  He  asketh  not  world's  eyes  ; 
Not  to  world's  ears  he  cries ; 
Saith,  —  ♦  These 
Shut,  if  ye  please ; ' 

40 


"He  measureth  world's  pleasure, 
World's  ease  as  Saints  might  measure  ; 
For  hire 
Just  love  entire 

"  He  asks,  not  grudging  pain  ; 
And  knows  his  asking  vain, 
And  cries  — 
'  Love !  Love ! '  and  dies ; 

"  In  guerdon  of  long  duty. 
Unowned  by  Love  or  Beauty ; 
And  goes  — 
Tell,  tell,  who  knows ! 

"  Aliens  from  Heaven's  worth. 
Fine  beasts  who  nose  i'  the  earth, 
Do  there 
Reward  prepare. 

"But  are  his  great  desires 
Food  but  for  nether  fires  ? 
Ah  me, 
A  mystery ! 

"  Can  it  be  his  alone. 
To  find  when  all  is  known, 
That  what 
He  solely  sought 

41 


"  Is  lost,  and  thereto  lost 
All  that  its  seeking  cost  ? 
That  he 
Must  finally, 

"  Through  sacrificial  tears, 
And  anchoretic  years, 
Tryst 
With  the  sensualist  ?  " 

So  ask  ;  and  if  they  tell 
The  secret  terrible. 

Good  friend, 
I  pray  thee  send 

Some  high  gold  embassage 
To  teach  my  unripe  age. 
Tell ! 
Lest  my  feet  walk  hell. 


42 


A  FALLEN  YEW 

T  seemed  corrival  of  the  world's  great  prime, 
Made  to  un-edge  the  scythe  of  Time, 
And  last  with  stateliest  rhyme. 

No  tender  Dryad  ever  did  indue 

That  rigid  chiton  of  rough  yew,         \ 
To  fret  her  white  flesh  through  : 

But  some  god  like  to  those  grim  Asgard  lords, 
Who  walk  the  fables  of  the  hordes 

From  Scandinavian  fjords,  , 

Upheaved  its  stubborn  girth,  and  raised  unriven, 
Against  the  whirl-blast  and  the  levin. 
Defiant  arms  to  Heaven. 

When  doom  puffed  out  the  stars,  we  might  have  said, 
It  would  decline  its  heavy  head. 
And  see  the  world  to  bed. 

For  this  firm  yew  did  from  the  vassal  leas, 
And  rain  and  air,  its  tributaries, 
Its  revenues  increase, 

And  levy  impost  on  the  golden  sun. 

Take  the  blind  years  as  they  might  run. 
And  no  fate  seek  or  shun. 


43 


But  now  our  yew  is  strook,  is  fallen  — yea 
Hacked  like  dull  wood  of  every  day 
To  this  and  that,  men  say. 

Never  1  —  To  Hades'  shadowy  shipyards  gone, 
Dim  barge  of  Dis,  down  Acheron 
It  drops,  or  Lethe  wan. 

Stirred  by  its  fall  —  poor  destined  bark  of  Dis  ! 
Along  my  soul  a  bruit  there  is 
Of  echoing  images. 

Reverberations  of  mortality : 

Spelt  backward  from  its  death,  to  me 
Its  life  reads  saddenedly. 

Its  breast  was  hollowed  as  the  tooth  of  eld ; 
And  boys,  their  creeping  unbeheld, 
A  laughing  moment  dwelled. 

Yet  they,  within  its  very  heart  so  crept, 
Reached  not  the  heart  that  courage  kept 
With  winds  and  years  beswept. 

And  in  its  boughs  did  close  and  kindly  nest 
The  birds,  as  they  within  its  breast. 
By  all  its  leaves  caressed. 

But  bird  nor  child  might  touch  by  any  art 
Each  other's  or  the  tree's  hid  heart, 
A  whole  God's  breadth  apart ; 


44 


The  breadth  of  God,  the  breadth  of  death  and  life  1 
Even  so,  even  so,  in  undreamed  strife 
With  pulseless  Law,  the  wife, — 

The  sweetest  wife  on  sweetest  marriage-day, — 
Their  souls  at  grapple  in  mid-way. 
Sweet  to  her  sweet  may  say : 

*'  I  take  you  to  my  inmost  heart,  my  true  !  " 
Ah,  fool !  but  there  is  one  heart  you 
Shall  never  take  him  to  ! 

The  hold  that  falls  not  when  the  town  is  got, 
The  heart's  heart,  whose  immurbd  plot 
Hath  keys  yourself  keep  not ! 

Its  ports  you  cannot  burst  —  you  are  withstood  — 
For  him  that  to  your  listening  blood 
Sends  precepts  as  he  would. 

Its  gates  are  deaf  to  Love,  high  summoner ; 
Yea,  Love's  great  warrant  runs  not  there  : 
You  are  your  prisoner. 

Yourself  are  with  yourself  the  sole  consortress 
In  that  unleaguerable  fortress  ; 
It  knows  you  not  for  portress. 

Its  keys  are  at  the  cincture  hung  of  God ; 
Its  gates  are  trepidant  to  His  nod ; 
By  Him  its  floors  are  trod. 

45 


And  if  His  feet  shall  rock  those  floors  in  wrath, 
Or  blest  aspersion  sleek  His  path, 
Is  only  choice  it  hath. 

Yea,  in  that  ultimate  heart's  occult  abode 
To  lie  as  in  an  oubliette  of  God, 
Or  as  a  bower  untrod, 

Built  by  a  secret  Lover  for  His  Spouse  ;  — 
Sole  choice  is  this  your  life  allows, 
Sad  tree,  whose  perishing  boughs 
So  few  birds  house  ! 


T 


DREAM-TRYST 

HE  breaths  of  kissing  night  and  day 
Were  mingled  in  the  eastern  Heaven  : 
Throbbing  with  unheard  melody 
Shook  Lyra  all  its  star-chord  seven : 

When  dusk  shrunk  cold,  and  light  trod  shy, 

And  dawn's  grey  eyes  were  troubled  grey  ; 
And  souls  went  palely  up  the  sky. 
And  mine  to  Lucide. 


There  was  no  change  in  her  sweet  eyes 

Since  last  I  saw  those  sweet  eyes  shine  ; 
There  was  no  change  in  her  deep  heart 

Since  last  that  deep  heart  knocked  at  mine. 
Her  eyes  were  clear,  her  eyes  were  Hope's, 

Wherein  did  ever  come  and  go 
The  sparkle  of  the  fountain-drops 
From  her  sweet  soul  below. 

The  chambers  in  the  house  of  dreams 

Are  fed  with  so  divine  an  air, 
That  Time's  hoar  wings  grow  young  therein, 
And  they  who  walk  there  are  most  fair. 
I  joyed  for  me,  I  joyed  for  her. 

Who  with  the  Past  meet  girt  about : 
Where  our  last  kiss  still  warms  the  air, 
Nor  can  her  eyes  go  out. 


47 


A  CORYMBUS   FOR  AUTUMN 

HEARKEN  my  chant,  't  is 
As  a  Bacchante's, 
A  grape-spurt,  a  vine-splash,  a  tossed  tress,  flown  vaunt  't  is  ! 

Suffer  my  singing, 
Gipsy  of  Seasons,  ere  thou  go  winging ; 

Ere  Winter  throws 

His  slaking  snows 
In  thy  f easting-flagon's  impurpurate  glows  I 
The  sopped  sun  —  toper  as  ever  drank  hard  — 

Stares  foolish,  hazed, 

Rubicund,  dazed, 
Totty  with  thine  October  tankard. 
Tanned  maiden  !  with  cheeks  like  apples  russet, 

And  breast  a  brown  agaric  faint-flushing  at  tip. 
And  a  mouth  too  red  for  the  moon  to  buss  it, 
But  her  cheek  unvow  its  vestalship ; 

Thy  mists  enclip 
Her  steel-clear  circuit  illuminous, 

Until  it  crust 

Rubiginous 
With  the  glorious  gules  of  a  glowing  rust. 

Far  other  saw  we,  other  indeed, 

The  crescent  moon,  in  the  May-days  dead. 
Fly  up  with  its  slender  white  wings  spread 

Out  of  its  nest  in  the  sea's  waved  mead  I 

How  are  the  veins  of  thee,  Autumn,  laden  ? 

48 


Umbered  juices, 
And  pulpbd  oozes 
Pappy  out  of  the  cherry-bruises, 
Froth  the  veins  of  thee,  wild,  wild  maiden ! 
With  hair  that  musters 
In  globed  clusters. 
In  tumbling  clusters,  like  swarthy  grapes. 
Round  thy  brow  and  thine  ears  o'ershaden  ; 
With  the  burning  darkness  of  eyes  like  pansies, 
Like  velvet  pansies 
Wherethrough  escapes 
The  splendent  might  of  thy  conflagrate  fancies ; 
With  robe  gold-tawny  not  hiding  the  shapes 
Of  the  feet  whereunto  it  falleth  down, 
Thy  naked  feet  unsandalled  ; 
With  robe  gold-tawny  that  does  not  veil 
Feet  where  the  red 
Is  meshed  in  the  brown, 
Like  a  rubied  sun  in  a  Venice-sail. 

The  wassailous  heart  of  the  Year  is  thine ! 
His  Bacchic  fingers  disentwine 

His  coronal 

At  thy  festival ; 
His  revelling  fingers  disentwine 

Leaf,  flower,  and  all, 

And  let  them  fall 
Blossom  and  all  in  thy  wavering  wine. 
The  Summer  looks  out  from  her  brazen  tower, 
Through  the  flashing  bars  of  July, 

49 


Waiting  thy  ripened  golden  shower ; 

Whereof  there  cometh,  with  sandals  fleet, 
The  North-west  flying  viewlessly, 

With  a  sword  to  sheer,  and  untameable  feet. 
And  the  gorgon-head  of  the  Winter  shown 
To  stiffen  the  gazing  earth  as  stone. 

In  crystal  Heaven's  magic  sphere 

Poised  in  the  palm  of  thy  fervid  hand. 
Thou  seest  the  enchanted  shows  appear 
That  stain  Favonian  firmament ; 
Richer  than  ever  the  Occident 

Gave  up  to  bygone  Summer's  wand. 
Day's  dying  dragon  lies  drooping  his  crest, 
Panting  red  pants  into  the  West. 
Or  a  butterfly  sunset  claps  its  wings 

With  flitter  alit  on  the  swinging  blossom, 
The  gusty  blossom,  that  tosses  and  swings, 

Of  the  sea  with  its  blown  and  ruffled  bosom  ; 
Its  ruffled  bosom  wherethrough  the  wind  sings 
Till  the  crisped  petals  are  loosened  and  strown 
Overblown,  on  the  sand  ; 
Shed,  curling  as  dead 
Rose-leaves  curl,  on  the  flecked  strand. 
Or  higher,  holier,  saintlier  when,  as  now, 
All  nature  sacerdotal  seems,  and  thou. 

The  calm  hour  strikes  on  yon  golden  gong, 

In  tones  of  floating  and  mellow  light 
A  spreading  summons  to  even-song : 
See  how  there 


50 


The  cowled  night 
Kneels  on  the  Eastern  sanctuary-stair. 
What  is  this  feel  of  incense  everywhere  ? 

Clings  it  round  folds  of  the  blanch-amiced  clouds, 
Upwafted  by  the  solemn  thurifer, 

The  mighty  spirit  unknown, 
That  swingeth  the  slow  earth  before  the  embannered  Throne? 

Or  is  't  the  Season  under  all  these  shrouds 
Of  light,  and  sense,  and  silence,  makes  her  known 

A  presence  everywhere, 

An  inarticulate  prayer, 
A  hand  on  the  soothed  tresses  of  the  air  ? 

But  there  is  one  hour  scant 
Of  this  Titanian,  primal  liturgy ; 
As  there  is  but  one  hour  for  me  and  thee, 
Autumn,  for  thee  and  thine  hierophant, 

Of  this  grave  ending  chant. 

Round  the  earth  still  and  stark 
Heaven's  death-lights  kindle,  yellow  spark  by  spark. 
Beneath  the  dreadful  catafalque  of  the  dark. 

And  I  had  ended  there : 
But  a  great  wind  blew  all  the  stars  to  flare. 
And  cried,  "  I  sweep  the  path  before  the  moon ! 
Tarry  ye  now  the  coming  of  the  moon, 

For  she  is  coming  soon  ;  " 
Then  died  before  the  coming  of  the  moon. 
And  she  came  forth  upon  the  trepidant  air, 

In  vesture  unimagined-fair. 

Woven  as  woof  of  flag-lilies ; 

5^. 


And  curdled  as  of  flag-lilies 
The  vapour  at  the  feet  of  her, 
And  a  haze  about  her  tinged  in  fainter  wise. 
As  if  she  had  trodden  the  stars  in  press, 
Till  the  gold  wine  spurted  over  her  dress. 
Till  the  gold  wine  gushed  out  round  her  feet ; 

Spouted  over  her  stainbd  wear, 
And  bubbled  in  golden  froth  at  her  feet, 

And  hung  like  a  whirlpool's  mist  round  her. 
Still,  mighty  Season,  do  I  see  't, 
Thy  sway  is  still  majestical ! 
Thou  hold'st  of  God,  by  title  sure. 
Thine  indefeasible  investiture. 

And  that  right  round  thy  locks  are  native  to ; 
The  heavens  upon  thy  brow  imperial. 
This  huge  terrene  thy  ball. 
And  o'er  thy  shoulders  thrown  wide  air's  depending  pall. 
What  if  thine  earth  be  blear  and  bleak  of  hue  ? 

Still,  still  the  skies  are  sweet ! 
Still,  Season,  still  thou  hast  thy  triumphs  there  ! 
How  have  I,  unaware, 
Forgetful  of  my  strain  inaugural, 

Cleft  the  great  rondure  of  thy  reign  complete, 
Yielding  thee  half,  who  hast  indeed  the  all  ? 
I  will  not  think  thy  sovereignty  begun 

But  with  the  shepherd  sun 
That  washes  in  the  sea  the  stars'  gold  fleeces 

Or  that  with  day  it  ceases. 
Who  sets  his  burning  lips  to  the  salt  brine. 
And  purples  it  to  wine  ; 

52 


While  I  behold  how  ermined  Artemis 

Ordainbd  weed  must  wear, 

And  toil  thy  business ; 

Who  witness  am  of  her, 
Her  too  in  autumn  turned  a  vintager ; 
And,  laden  with  its  lamped  clusters  bright, 
The  fiery-fruited  vineyard  of  this  night. 


53 


THE  HOUND  OF  HEAVEN 

FLED  Him,  down  the  nights  and  down  the  days ; 

I  fled  Him,  down  the  arches  of  the  years ; 
I  fled  Him,  down  the  labyrinthine  ways 

Of  my  own  mind ;  and  in  the  mist  of  tears 
I  hid  from  Him,  and  under  running  laughter. 
Up  vistaed  hopes  I  sped ; 
And  shot,  precipitated 
Adown  Titanic  glooms  of  chasmed  fears, 

From  those  strong  Feet  that  followed,  followed  after. 
But  with  unhurrying  chase, 
And  unperturbed  pace. 
Deliberate  speed,  majestic  instancy, 
They  beat — and  a  Voice  beat 
More  instant  than  the  Feet  — 
"All  things  betray  thee,  who  betrayest  Me." 

I  pleaded,  outlaw-wise. 
By  many  a  hearted  casement,  curtained  red, 

Trellised  with  intertwining  charities  ; 
(For,  though  I  knew  His  love  Who  followed. 

Yet  was  I  sore  adread 
Lest,  having  Him,  I  must  have  naught  beside) 
But,  if  one  little  casement  parted  wide, 

The  gust  of  His  approach  would  clash  it  to. 

Fear  wist  not  to  evade,  as  Love  wist  to  pursue. 
Across  the  margent  of  the  world  I  fled, 

And  troubled  the  gold  gateways  of  the  stars. 

Smiting  for  shelter  on  their  changed  bars ; 

54 


Fretted  to  dulcet  jars 
And  silvern  chatter  the  pale  ports  o'  the  moon. 
I  said  to  dawn  :  Be  sudden  —  to  eve  :  Be  soon  ; 
With  thy  young  skiey  blossoms  heap  me  over 
From  this  tremendous  Lover  1 
Float  thy  vague  veil  about  me,  lest  He  see ! 

I  tempted  all  His  servitors,  but  to  find 
My  own  betrayal  in  their  constancy. 
In  faith  to  Him  their  fickleness  to  me, 

Their  traitorous  trueness,  and  their  loyal  deceit. 
To  all  swift  things  for  swiftness  did  I  sue ; 
Clung  to  the  whistling  mane  of  every  wind. 
But  whether  they  swept,  smoothly  fleet. 
The  long  savannahs  of  the  blue ; 

Or  whether.  Thunder- driven, 
They  clanged  his  chariot  'thwart  a  heaven. 
Flashy  with  flying  lightnings  round  the  spurn  o'  their  feet: 
Fear  wist  not  to  evade  as  Love  wist  to  pursue. 
Still  with  unhurrying  chase. 
And  unperturbed  pace, 
Deliberate  speed,  majestic  instancy. 
Came  on  the  following  Feet, 
And  a  Voice  above  their  beat — 
"  Naught  shelters  thee,  who  wilt  not  shelter  Me." 

I  sought  no  more  that,  after  which  I  strayed, 

In  face  of  man  or  maid ; 
But  still  within  the  little  children's  eyes 

Seems  something,  something  that  replies, 
They  at  least  are  for  me,  surely  for  me ! 

55 


I  turned  me  to  them  very  wistfully ; 

But  just  as  their  young  eyes  grew  sudden  fair 

With  dawning  answers  there, 
Their  angel  plucked  them  from  me  by  the  hair. 
"Come  then,  ye  other  children,  Nature's  —  share 
With  me  "  (said  I)  "  your  delicate  fellowship  ; 

Let  me  greet  you  lip  to  lip. 

Let  me  twine  with  you  caresses, 
Wantoning 

With  our  Lady-Mother's  vagrant  tresses. 
Banqueting 

With  her  in  her  wind-walled  palace, 

Underneath  her  azured  dais. 

Quaffing,  as  your  taintless  way  is. 
From  a  chalice 
Lucent-weeping  out  of  the  dayspring." 

So  it  was  done  : 
/in  their  delicate  fellowship  was  one  — 
Drew  the  bolt  of  Nature's  secrecies. 

/  knew  all  the  swift  importings 

On  the  wilful  face  of  skies ; 

I  knew  how  the  clouds  arise 

Spumbd  of  the  wild  sea-snortings ; 
All  that 's  born  or  dies 

Rose  and  drooped  with  —  made  them  shapers 
Of  mine  own  moods,  or  wailful  or  divine  — 

With  them  joyed  and  was  bereaven. 

I  was  heavy  with  the  even, 

When  she  lit  her  glimmering  tapers 

Round  the  day's  dead  sanctities. 

S6 


I  laughed  in  the  morning's  eyes. 
I  triumphed  and  I  saddened  with  all  weather, 

Heaven  and  I  wept  together, 
And  its  sweet  tears  were  salt  with  mortal  mine ; 
Against  the  red  throb  of  its  sunset-heart 
1  laid  my  own  to  beat, 
And  share  commingling  heat ; 
But  not  by  that,  by  that,  was  eased  my  human  smart. 
In  vain  my  tears  were  wet  on  Heaven's  grey  cheek. 
For  ah !  we  know  not  what  each  other  says, 

These  things  and  I ;  in  sound  /speak  — 
Their  sound  is  but  their  stir,  they  speak  by  silences. 
Nature,  poor  stepdame,  cannot  slake  my  drouth ; 

Let  her,  if  she  would  owe  me. 
Drop  yon  blue  bosom-veil  of  sky,  and  show  me 

The  breasts  o'  her  tenderness  : 
Never  did  any  milk  of  hers  once  bless 
My  thirsting  mouth. 
Nigh  and  nigh  draws  the  chase, 
With  unperturbed  pace. 
Deliberate  speed  majestic  instancy 
And  past  those  noisbd  Feet 
A  voice  comes  yet  more  fleet  — 
"Lo!  naught  contents  thee,  who  content'st  not  Me." 

Naked  I  wait  Thy  love's  uplifted  stroke ! 
My  harness  piece  by  piece  Thou  hast  hewn  from  me, 
And  smitten  me  to  my  knee ; 

I  am  defenceless  utterly. 

I  slept,  methinks,  and  woke, 

57 


And,  slowly  gazing,  find  me  stripped  in  sleep. 
In  the  rash  lustihead  of  my  young  powers, 

I  shook  the  pillaring  hours 
And  pulled  my  life  upon  me ;  grimed  with  smears, 
I  stand  amid  the  dust  o'  the  mounded  years  — 
My  mangled  youth  lies  dead  beneath  the  heap. 
My  days  have  crackled  and  gone  up  in  smoke. 
Have  puffed  and  burst  as  sun-starts  on  a  stream. 

Yea,  faileth  now  even  dream 
The  dreamer,  and  the  lute  the  lutanist ; 
Even  the  linked  fantasies,  in  whose  blossomy  twist 
I  swung  the  earth  a  trinket  at  my  wrist, 
Are  yielding ;  cords  of  all  too  weak  account 
For  earth  with  heavy  griefs  so  overplussed. 

Ah !  is  Thy  love  indeed 
A  weed,  albeit  an  amaranthine  weed, 
Suffering  no  flowers  except  its  own  to  mount? 

Ah !  must  — 

Designer  infinite !  — 
Ah !  must  Thou  char  the  wood  ere  Thou  canst  limn  with  it] 
My  freshness  spent  its  wavering  shower  i'  the  dust ; 
And  now  my  heart  is  as  a  broken  fount. 
Wherein  tear-drippings  stagnate,  spilt  down  ever 

From  the  dank  thoughts  that  shiver 
Upon  the  sighful  branches  of  my  mind. 

Such  is  ;  what  is  to  be  ? 
The  pulp  so  bitter,  how  shall  taste  the  rind  ? 
I  dimly  guess  what  Time  in  mists  confounds ; 
Yet  ever  and  anon  a  trumpet  sounds 
From  the  hid  battlements  of  Eternity, 

S8 


Those  shaken  mists  a  space  unsettle,  then 
Round  the  half-glimpsbd  turrets  slowly  wash  again ; 
But  not  ere  him  who  summoneth 
I  first  have  seen,  enwound 
With  glooming  robes  purpureal,  cypress-crowned ; 
His  name  I  know,  and  what  his  trumpet  saith. 
Whether  man's  heart  or  life  it  be  which  yields 
Thee  harvest,  must  Thy  harvest  fields 
Be  dunged  with  rotten  death  ? 
Now  of  that  long  pursuit 
Comes  on  at  hand  the  bruit ; 
That  Voice  is  round  me  like  a  bursting  sea : 
"And  is  thy  earth  so  marred, 
Shattered  in  shard  on  shard  ? 
Lo,  all  things  fly  thee,  for  thou  fliest  Me ! 

"  Strange,  piteous,  futile  thing ! 
Wherefore  should  any  set  thee  love  apart  ? 
Seeing  none  but  I  makes  much  of  naught "  (He  said), 
"And  human  love  needs  human  meriting : 

How  hast  thou  merited  — 
Of  all  man's  clotted  clay  the  dingiest  clot  ? 

Alack,  thou  knowest  not 
How  little  worthy  of  any  love  thou  art ! 
Whom  wilt  thou  find  to  love  ignoble  thee, 

Save  Me,  save  only  Me  ? 
All  which  I  took  from  thee  I  did  but  take. 

Not  for  thy  harms, 
But  just  that  thou  might'st  seek  it  in  My  arms. 

All  which  thy  child's  mistake 

59 


Fancies  as  lost,  I  have  stored  for  thee  at  home : 
Rise,  clasp  My  hand,  and  come." 

Halts  by  me  that  footfall : 

Is  my  gloom,  after  all, 
Sha^e  of  His  hand,  outstretched  caressingly  ? 

"Ah,  fondest,  blindest,  weakest, 

I  am  He  Whom  thou  seekest ! 
Thou  dravest  love  from  thee,  who  dravest  Me." 


60 


A  JUDGMENT  IN  HEAVEN 

ATHWART  the  sod  which  is  treading  for  God* 
the  poet  paced  with  his  splendid  eyes ; 
Paradise-verdure  he  stately  passes*  to  win  to  the 

Father  of  Paradise, 
Through  the  conscious  and  palpitant  grasses  *  of 
intertangled  relucent  dyes. 

The  angels  a-play  on  its  fields  of  Summer  *  (their 
wild  wings  rustled  his  guides'  cymars) 

Looked  up  from  disport  at  the  passing  comer,  *  as 
they  pelted  each  other  with  handfuls  of  stars ; 

And  the  warden-spirits  with  startled  feet  rose,* 
hand  on  sword,  by  their  tethered  cars. 

With  plumes  night-tinctured  englobed  and  cinct- 
ured,* of  Saints,  his  guided  steps  held  on 

To  where  on  the  far  crystalline  pale  *  of  that 
transtellar  Heaven  there  shone 

The  immutable  crocean  dawn  *  effusing  from  the 
Father's  Throne. 

Through  the  reverberant  Eden-ways  *  the  bruit  of 

his  great  advent  driven, 
Back  from  the  fulgent  justle   and   press*   with 

mighty  echoing  so  was  given, 

Note — I  have  throughout  this  poem  used  an  asterisk  to 
indicate  the  caesura  in  the  middle  of  the  line,  after  the 
manner  of  the  old  Saxon  section-point. 

6i 


As  when  the  surly  thunder  smites  *  upon  the 
clanged  gates  of  Heaven. 

Over  the  bickering  gonfalons,  *  far-ranged  as  for 

Tartarean  wars, 
Went  a  waver  of  ribbed  fire  *  —  as  night-seas  on 

phosphoric  bars 
Like  a  flame-plumed  fan  shake  slowly  out  *  their 

ridgy  reach  of  crumbling  stars. 

At  length  to  where  on  His  fretted  Throne  *  sat  in 
the  heart  of  His  aged  dominions 

The  great  Triune,  and  Mary  nigh,  "*■  lit  round 
with  spears  of  their  hauberked  minions. 

The  poet  drew,  in  the  thunderous  blue  *  involved 
dread  of  those  mounted  pinions. 

As  in  a  secret  and  tenebrous  cloud  *  the  watcher 
from  the  disquiet  earth 

At  momentary  intervals  *  beholds  from  its  ragged 
rifts  break  forth 

The  flash  of  a  golden  perturbation,  *  the  travel- 
ling threat  of  a  witched  birth  ; 

Till  heavily  parts  a  sinister  chasm,  *  a  grisly  jaw, 

whose  verges  soon, 
Slowly  and  ominously  filled  *  by  the  on-coming 

plenilune, 
Supportlessly  congest  with  fire,  *  and  suddenly 

spit  forth  the  moon  :  — 

63 


With  beauty,  not  terror,  through  tangled  error* 
of  night-dipt  plumes  so  burned  their  charge ; 

Swayed  and  parted  the  globing  clusters  *  so, 

disclosed  from  their  kindling  marge, 

Roseal-chapleted,  splendent-vestured,  *  the  singer 
there  where  God's  light  lay  large. 

Hu,  hu !  a  wonder !  a  wonder  !  see,  *  clasping  the 

singer's  glories  clings 
A  dingy  creature,  even  to  laughter  *  cloaked  and 

clad  in  patchwork  things, 
Shrinking  close  from  the  unused  glows  *  of  the 

seraphs'  versicoloured  wings. 

A  rhymer,  rhyming  a  futile  rhyme,  *  he  had  crept 

for  convoy  through  Eden-ways 
Into  the  shade  of  the  poet's  glory,  *  darkened 

under  his  prevalent  rays, 
Fearfully  hoping  a  distant  welcome  *  as  a  poor 

kinsman  of  his  lays. 

The  angels  laughed  with  a  lovely  scorning  :  *  — 
"  Who  has  done  this  sorry  deed  in 

The  garden  of  our  Father,  God  ?  *  'mid  his  blos- 
soms to  sow  this  weed  in  ? 

Never  our  fingers  knew  this  stuff  :  *  not  so  fashion 
the  looms  of  Eden  1  " 

The  singer  bowed  his  brow  majestic,  *^  searching 
that  patchwork  through  and  through, 

63 


Feeling  God's  lucent  gazes  traverse  *  his  singing- 

stoling  and  spirit  too  : 
The  hallowed  harpers  were  fain  to  frown  *  on  the 

strange  thing  come  'mid  their  sacred  crew, 
Only  the  singer  that  was  earth  *  his  fellow-earth 

and  his  own  self  knew. 

But  the  poet  rent  off  robe  and  wreath,  *  so  as  a 

sloughing  serpent  doth, 
Laid  them   at  the   rhymer's  feet,   *  shed  down 

wreath  and  raiment  both, 
Stood   in  a  dim  and   shamed  stole,   *   like  the 

tattered  wing  of  a  musty  moth. 

"  Thou  gav'st  the  weed  and  wreath  of  song,  *  the 
weed  and  wreath  are  solely  Thine, 

And  this  dishonest  vesture  *  is  the  only  vesture 
that  is  mine ; 

The  life  /  textured,  Thou  the  song  *  my 

handicraft  is  not  divine  !  " 

He  wrested  o'er  the  rhymer's  head  *  that  gar- 
menting which  wrought  him  wrong ; 

A  flickering  tissue  argentine  *  down  dripped  its 
shivering  silvers  long :  — 

"  Better  thou  wov'st  thy  woof  of  life  *  than  thou 
didst  weave  thy  woof  of  song  I  " 

Never  a  chief  in  Saintdom  was,  *  but  turned  him 
from  the  Poet  then  ; 

64 


Never  an  eye  looked  mild  on  him  *  'mid  all  the 

angel  myriads  ten, 
Save  sinless  Mary,  and  sinful  Mary  *  — the  Mary 

titled  Magdalen. 

"Turn  yon  robe,"  spake  Magdalen,  *  "of  torn 

bright  song,  and  see  and  feel." 
They  turned  the  raiment,  saw  and  felt  *  what 

their  turning  did  reveal  — 
All  the  inner  surface  piled  *  with  bloodied  hairs, 

like  hairs  of  steel. 

"Take,  I  pray,  yon  chaplet  up,  *  thrown  down 

ruddied  from  his  head." 
They  took  the  roseal  chaplet  up,  *  and  they  stood 

astonished : 
Every  leaf  between  their  fingers,  ^  as  they  bruised 

it,  burst  and  bled. 

"See  his  torn  flesh  through  those  rents;  *  see 

the  punctures  round  his  hair. 
As  if  the  chaplet-flowers  had  driven  *  deep  roots 

in  to  nourish  there  — 
Lord,  who  gav'st  him  robe  and  wreath,  *  w^at 

was  this  Thou  gav'st  for  wear  ?  " 

"  Fetch  forth  the  Paradisal  garb  !  "  *  spake  the 

Father,  sweet  and  low ; 
Drew  them  both  by  the  frightened  hand  *  where 

Mary's  throne  made  irised  bow  — 
"  Take,  Princess  Mary,  of  thy  good  grace,  *  two 

spirits  greater  than  they  know." 

65 


V 


EPILOGUE 

IRTUE  may  unlock  hell,  or  even 
A  sin  turn  in  the  wards  of  Heaven, 
(As  ethics  of  the  text-book  go), 
So  little  men  their  own  deeds  know. 
Or  through  the  intricate  mUte 
Guess  whitherward  draws  the  battle-sway 
So  little,  if  they  know  the  deed, 
Discern  what  therefrom  shall  succeed. 
To  wisest  moralists  't  is  but  given 
To  work  rough  border-law  of  Heaven, 
Within  this  narrow  life  of  ours, 
These  marches  'twixt  delimitless  Powers. 
Is  it,  if  Heaven  the  future  showed. 
Is  it  the  all-severest  mode 
To  see  ourselves  with  the  eyes  of  God  ? 
God  rather  grant,  at  His  assize, 
He  see  us  not  with  our  own  eyes  1 


Heaven,  which  man's  generations  draws 

Nor  deviates  into  replicas, 

Must  of  as  deep  diversity 

In  judgment  as  creation  be. 

There  is  no  expeditious  road 

To  pack  and  label  men  for  God, 

And  save  them  by  the  barrel-load. 

Some  may  perchance,  with  strange  surprise. 

Have  blundered  into  Paradise. 

In  vasty  dusk  of  life  abroad, 

66 


They  fondly  thought  to  err  from  God, 
Nor  knew  the  circle  that  they  trod  ; 
And  wandering  all  the  night  about, 
Found  them  at  morn  where  they  set  out. 
Death  dawned ;  Heaven  lay  in  prospect  wide 
Lo  !  they  were  standing  by  His  side  ! 

The  rhymer  a  life  uncomplex, 

With  just  such  cares  as  mortals  vex, 

So  simply  felt  as  all  men  feel, 

Lived  purely  out  to  his  soul's  weal. 

A  double  life  the  Poet  lived, 

And  with  a  double  burthen  grieved ; 

The  life  of  flesh  and  life  of  song. 

The  pangs  to  both  lives  that  belong ; 

Immortal  knew  and  mortal  pain, 

Who  in  two  worlds  could  lose  and  gain. 

And  found  immortal  fruits  must  be 

Mortal  through  his  mortality. 

The  life  of  flesh  and  life  of  song ! 

If  one  life  worked  the  other  wrong, 

What  expiating  agony 

May  for  him  damned  to  poesy 

Shut  in  that  little  sentence  be  — 

What  deep  austerities  of  strife  — 

"  He  lived  his  life."     He  lived  his  life  ! 


67 


POEMS  ON  CHILDREN 


DAISY 

WHERE  the  thistle  lifts  a  purple  crown 
Six  foot  out  of  the  turf, 
And  the  harebell  shakes  on  the  windy  hill  — 
O  the  breath  of  the  distant  surf !  — 

The  hills  look  over  on  the  South, 
And  southward  dreams  the  sea ; 

And,  with  the  sea-breeze  hand  in  hand, 
Came  innocence  and  she. 

Where  'mid  the  gorse  the  raspberry 

Red  for  the  gatherer  springs, 
Two  children  did  we  stray  and  talk 

Wise,  idle,  childish  things. 

She  listened  with  big-lipped  surprise, 
Breast-deep  mid  flower  and  spine  : 

Her  skin  was  like  a  grape,  whose  veins 
Run  snow  instead  of  wine. 

She  knew  not  those  sweet  words  she  spake, 

Nor  knew  her  own  sweet  way ; 
But  there  's  never  a  bird,  so  sweet  a  song 

Thronged  in  whose  throat  that  day  ! 

71 


Oh,  there  were  flowers  in  Storrington 

On  the  turf  and  on  the  spray ; 
But  the  sweetest  flower  on  Sussex  hills 

Was  the  Daisy-flower  that  day ! 

Her  beauty  smoothed  earth's  furrowed  face  ! 

She  gave  me  tokens  three  :  — 
A  look,  a  word  of  her  winsome  mouth, 

And  a  wild  raspberry. 

A  berry  red,  a  guileless  look, 
A  still  word,  —  strings  of  sand  ! 

And  yet  they  made  my  wild,  wild  heart 
Fly  down  to  her  little  hand. 

For  standing  artless  as  the  air. 

And  candid  as  the  skies. 
She  took  the  berries  with  her  hand, 

And  the  love  with  her  sweet  eyes. 

The  fairest  things  have  fleetest  end  : 
Their  scent  survives  their  close. 

But  the  rose's  scent  is  bitterness 
To  him  that  loved  the  rose ! 

She  looked  a  little  wistfully. 

Then  went  her  sunshine  way :  — 

The  sea's  eye  had  a  mist  on  it, 
And  the  leaves  fell  from  the  day. 

7* 


She  went  her  unremembering  way, 

She  went  and  left  in  me 
The  pang  of  all  the  partings  gone, 

And  partings  yet  to  be. 

She  left  me  marvelling  why  my  soul 
Was  sad  that  she  was  glad  ; 

At  all  the  sadness  in  the  sweet. 
The  sweetness  in  the  sad. 

Still,  still  I  seemed  to  see  her,  still 
Look  up  with  soft  replies. 

And  take  the  berries  with  her  hand. 
And  the  love  with  her  lovely  eyes. 

Nothing  begins,  and  nothing  ends, 
That  is  not  paid  with  moan  ; 

For  we  are  born  in  others'  pain. 
And  perish  in  our  own. 


73 


THE  MAKING  OF  VIOLA 


The  Father  of  Heavin. 

SPIN,  daughter  Mary,  spin, 
Twirl  your  wheel  with  silver  din  ; 
Spin,  daughter  Mary,  spin, 
Spin  a  tress  for  Viola. 


Angels. 


Spin,  Queen  Mary,  a 
Brown  tress  for  Viola ! 


II 

The  Father  of  Heaven. 

Weave,  hands  angelical, 
Weave  a  woof  of  flesh  to  pall  — 
Weave,  hands  angelical  — 
Flesh  to  pall  our  Viola. 


Angels. 


Weave,  singing  brothers,  a 
Velvet  flesh  for  Viola  1 


III 

The  Father  of  Heaven. 

Scoop,  young  Jesus,  for  her  eyes, 
Wood-browned  pools  of  Paradise 
Young  Jesus,  for  the  eyes. 
For  the  eyes  of  Viola. 

74 


Angels. 

Tint,  Prince  Jesus,  a 
Dusked  eye  for  Viola ! 

IV 

The  Father  of  Heaven. 

Cast  a  star  therein  to  drown, 
Like  a  torch  in  cavern  brown, 
Sink  a  burning  star  to  drown 
Whelmed  in  eyes  of  Viola. 


Angels. 


Lave,  Prince  Jesus,  a 
Star  in  eyes  of  Viola  1 


V 

The  Father  of  Heaven. 

Breathe,  Lord  Paraclete, 
To  a  bubbled  crystal  meet  — 
Breathe,  Lord  Paraclete  — 
Crystal  soul  for  Viola. 


Angels. 


Breathe,  Regal  Spirit,  a 
Flashing  soul  for  Viola  ! 


VI 

The  Father  of  Heaven. 

Child-angels,  from  your  wings 
Fall  the  roseal  hoverings, 
Child-angels,  from  your  wings, 
On  the  cheeks  of  Viola. 


75 


Angels. 

Linger,  rosy  reflex,  a 
Quenchless  stain,  on  Viola! 

VII 

All  things  being  accomplished,  saith  the  Father  of  Heaven. 
Bear  her  down,  and  bearing,  sing, 
Bear  her  down  on  spyless  wing. 
Bear  her  down,  and  bearing,  sing. 
With  a  sound  of  viola. 


Angels. 


Angels. 


Music  as  her  name  is,  a 
Sweet  sound  of  Viola ! 

VIII 

Wheeling  angels,  past  espial, 
Danced  her  down  with  sound  of  viol; 
Wheeling  angels,  past  espial, 
Descanting  on  "Viola." 

Sing,  in  our  footing,  a 
Lovely  lilt  of  "Viola!" 

IX 

Baby  smiled,  mother  wailed, 
Earthward  while  the  sweetling  sailed ; 
Mother  smiled,  baby  wailed, 
When  to  earth  came  Viola. 


76 


And  her  elders  shall  say :  — 

So  soon  have  we  taught  you  a 
Way  to  weep,  poor  Viola ! 


Smile,  sweet  baby,  smile, 
For  you  will  have  weeping-while  ; 
Native  in  your  Heaven  is  smile, — 
But  your  weeping,  Viola  ? 


Whence  your  smiles  we  know,  but  ah  ! 
Whence  your  weeping,  Viola?  — 
Our  first  gift  to  you  is  a 
Gift  of  tears,  my  Viola  ! 


77 


TO  MY  GODCHILD 

FRANCIS    M.    W.    M. 

THIS  labouring,  vast,  Tellurian  galleon, 
Riding  at  anchor  off  the  orient  sun, 
Had  broken  its  cable,  and  stood  out  to  space 
Down  some  frore  Arctic  of  the  aerial  ways : 
And  now,  back  warping  from  the  inclement  main. 
Its  vaporous  shroudage  drenched  with  icy  rain. 
It  swung  into  its  azure  roads  again ; 
When,  floated  on  the  prosperous  sun-gale,  you 
Lit,  a  white  halcyon  auspice,  'mid  our  frozen  crew. 

To  the  Sun,  stranger,  surely  you  belong, 

Giver  of  golden  days  and  golden  song ; 

Nor  is  it  by  an  all-unhappy  plan 

You  bear  the  name  of  me,  his  constant  Magian. 

Yet  ah  !  from  any  other  that  it  came. 

Lest  fated  to  my  fate  you  be,  as  to  my  name. 

When  at  the  first  those  tidings  did  they  bring. 

My  heart  turned  troubled  at  the  ominous  thing : 

Though  well  may  such  a  title  him  endower. 

For  whom  a  poet's  prayer  implores  a  poet's  power. 

The  Assisian,  who  kept  plighted  faith  to  three, 

To  Song,  to  Sanctitude,  and  Poverty, 

(In  two  alone  of  whom  most  singers  prove 

A  fatal  faithfulness  of  during  love  !) ; 

He  the  sweet  Sales,  of  whom  we  scarcely  ken 

How  God  he  could  love  more,  he  so  loved  men  ; 

The  crown  and  crowned  of  Laura  and  Italy  ; 

78 


And  Fletcher's  fellow  —  from  these,  and  not  from  me, 
Take  you  your  name,  and  take  your  legacy ! 

Or,  if  a  right  successive  you  declare 

When  worms,  for  ivies,  intertwine  my  hair, 

Take  but  this  Poesy  that  now  followeth 

My  clayey  hest  with  sullen  servile  breath. 

Made  then  your  happy  freedman  by  testating  death. 

My  song  I  do  but  hold  for  you  in  trust, 

I  ask  you  but  to  blossom  from  my  dust. 

When  you  have  compassed  all  weak  I  began. 

Diviner  poet,  and  ah  !  diviner  man ; 

The  man  at  feud  with  the  perduring  child 

In  you  before  song's  altar  nobly  reconciled ; 

From  the  wise  heavens  I  half  shall  smile  to  see 

How  little  a  world,  which  owned  you,  needed  me. 

If,  while  you  keep  the  vigils  of  the  night, 

For  your  wild  tears  make  darkness  all  too  bright. 

Some  lone  orb  through  your  lonely  window  peeps, 

As  it  played  lover  over  your  sweet  sleeps ; 

Think  it  a  golden  crevice  in  the  sky. 

Which  I  have  pierced  but  to  behold  you  by ! 

And  when,  immortal  mortal,  droops  your  head, 
And  you,  the  child  of  deathless  song,  are  dead  ; 
Then,  as  you  search  with  unaccustomed  glance 
The  ranks  of  Paradise  for  my  countenance. 
Turn  not  your  tread  along  the  Uranian  sod 
Among  the  bearded  counsellors  of  God ; 
For  if  in  Eden  as  on  earth  are  we, 


79 


I  sure  shall  keep  a  younger  company : 

Pass  where  beneath  their  rangbd  gonfalons 

The  starry  cohorts  shake  their  shielded  suns, 

The  dreadful  mass  of  their  enridged  spears ; 

Pass  where  majestical  the  eternal  peers, 

The  stately  choice  of  the  great  Saintdom,  meet  — 

A  silvern  segregation,  globed  complete 

In  sandalled  shadow  of  the  Triune  feet ; 

Pass  by  where  wait,  young  poet-wayfarer, 

Your  cousined  clusters,  emulous  to  share 

With  you  the  roseal  lightnings  burning  'mid  their  hair ; 

Pass  the  crystalline  sea,  the  Lampads  seven  :  — 

Look  for  me  in  the  nurseries  of  Heaven. 


80 


THE  POPPY 


TO    MONICA 


SUMMER  set  lip  to  earth's  bosom  bare, 
And  left  the  flushed  print  in  a  poppy  there  : 
Like  a  yawn  of  fire  from  the  grass  it  came, 
And  the  fanning  wind  puffed  it  to  flapping  flame. 

With  burnt  mouth  red  like  a  lion's  it  drank 
The  blood  of  the  sun  as  he  slaughtered  sank, 
And  dipped  its  cup  in  the  purpurate  shine 
When  the  eastern  conduits  ran  with  wine. 

Till  it  grew  lethargied  with  fierce  bliss, 
And  hot  as  a  swinked  gipsy  is, 
And  drowsed  in  sleepy  savageries, 
With  mouth  wide  a-pout  for  a  sultry  kiss. 

A  child  and  man  paced  side  by  side. 
Treading  the  skirts  of  eventide  ; 
But  between  the  clasp  of  his  hand  and  hers 
Lay,  felt  not,  twenty  withered  years. 

She  turned,  with  the  rout  of  her  dusk  South  hair, 
And  saw  the  sleeping  gipsy  there ; 
And  snatched  and  snapped  it  in  swift  child's  whim, 
With  —  "  Keep  it,  long  as  you  live  !  "  —  to  him. 

And  his  smile,  as  nymphs  from  their  laving  meres, 
Trembled  up  from  a  bath  of  tears ; 

8i 


And  joy,  like  a  mew  sea-rocked  apart, 
Tossed  on  the  wave  of  his  troubled  heart. 

For  he  saw  what  she  did  not  see, 

That  —  as  kindled  by  its  own  fervency  — 

The  verge  shrivelled  inward  smoulderingly : 

And  suddenly  'twixt  his  hand  and  hers 
He  knew  the  twenty  withered  years  — 
No  flower,  but  twenty  shrivelled  years. 

"  Was  never  such  thing  until  this  hour," 
Low  to  his  heart  he  said  ;  '*  the  flower 
Of  sleep  brings  wakening  to  me. 
And  of  oblivion  memory." 

"  Was  never  this  thing  to  me,"  he  said, 

"  Though  with  bruised  poppies  my  feet  are  red  1 " 

And  again  to  his  own  heart  very  low : 

"  O  child  !  I  love,  for  I  love  and  know  ; 

"  But  you,  who  love  nor  know  at  all 

The  diverse  chambers  in  Love's  guest-hall. 

Where  some  rise  early,  few  sit  long : 

In  how  differing  accents  hear  the  throng 

His  great  Pentecostal  tongue ; 

"Who  know  not  love  from  amity, 

Nor  my  reported  self  from  me  ; 

A  fair  fit  gift  is  this,  meseems. 

You  give  —  this  withering  flower  of  dreams. 

82 


"  O  frankly  fickle,  and  fickly  true, 
Do  you  know  what  the  days  will  do  to  you  ? 
To  your  Love  and  you  what  the  days  will  do, 
O  frankly  fickle,  and  fickly  true  ? 

"  You  have  loved  me,  Fair,  three  lives  —  or  days 
'T  will  pass  with  the  passing  of  my  face. 
But  where  /go,  your  face  goes  too, 
To  watch  lest  I  play  false  to  you. 

"  I  am  but,  my  sweet,  your  foster-lover. 
Knowing  well  when  certain  years  are  over 
You  vanish  from  me  to  another ; 
Yet  I  know,  and  love,  like  the  foster-mother. 

"  So,  frankly  fickle,  and  fickly  true  ! 

For  my  brief  life-while  I  take  from  you 

This  token,  fair  and  fit,  meseems, 

For  me  —  this  withering  flower  of  dreams." 


The  sleep-flower  sways  in  the  wheat  its  head. 
Heavy  with  dreams,  as  that  with  bread : 
The  goodly  grain  and  the  sun-flushed  sleeper 
The  reaper  reaps,  and  Time  the  reaper. 

I  hang  'mid  men  my  needless  head. 

And  my  fruit  is  dreams,  as  theirs  is  bread : 

The  goodly  men  and  the  sun-hazed  sleeper 

Time  shall  reap,  but  after  the  reaper 

The  world  shall  glean  of  me,  me  the  sleeper  1 

83 


Love  !  love  !  your  flower  of  withered  dream 
In  leaved  rhyme  lies  safe,  I  deem, 
Sheltered  and  shut  in  a  nook  of  rhyme. 
From  the  reaper  man,  and  his  reaper  Time. 

Love  !  /  fall  into  the  claws  of  Time  : 
But  lasts  within  a  leavM  rhyme 
All  that  the  world  of  me  esteems  — 
My  withered  dreams,  my  withered  dreams. 


84 


TO  MONICA  THOUGHT  DYING 


Y 


OU,  O  the  piteous  you  ! 

Who  all  the  long  night  through 

Anticipatedly 

Disclose  yourself  to  me 

Already  in  the  ways 
Beyond  our  human  comfortable  days ; 

How  can  you  deem  what  Death 

Impitiably  saith 

To  me,  who  listening  wake 

For  your  poor  sake  ? 

When  a  grown  woman  dies 
You  know  we  think  unceasingly 
What  things  she  said,  how  sweet,  how  wise ; 
And  these  do  make  our  misery. 

But  you  were  (you  to  me 
The  dead  anticipatedly !) 
You  —  eleven  years,  was  't  not,  or  so  ?  — 

Were  just  a  child,  you  know ; 

And  so  you  never  said 
Things  sweet  immeditatably  and  wise 
To  interdict  from  closure  my  wet  eyes : 

But  foolish  things,  my  dead,  my  dead ! 

Little  and  laughable, 

Your  age  that  fitted  well. 
And  was  it  such  things  all  unmemorable, 

Was  it  such  things  could  make 
Me  sob  all  night  for  your  implacable  sake  ? 

8s 


Yet,  as  you  said  to  me, 
In  pretty  make-believe  of  revelry, 

So  the  night  long  said  Death 

With  his  magniloquent  breath  ; 

(And  that  remembered  laughter 
Which  in  our  daily  uses  followed  after. 
Was  all  untuned  to  pity  and  to  awe) : 

"A  cup  of  chocolate^ 

One  farthing  is  the  rate. 

You  drink  it  through  a  straw!'' 

How  could  I  know,  how  know 
Those  laughing  words  when  drenched  with  sobbing  so  ? 
Another  voice  than  yours,  than  yours,  he  hath ! 

My  dear,  was  't  worth  his  breath. 
His  mighty  utterance  ? —  yet  he  saith,  and  saith  ! 
This  dreadful  Death  to  his  own  dreadfulness 

Doth  dreadful  wrong. 
This  dreadful  childish  babble  on  his  tongue ! 
That  iron  tongue  made  to  speak  sentences, 
And  wisdom  insupportably  complete, 
Why  should  it  only  say  the  long  night  through. 

In  mimicry  of  you, — 

^'■A  cup  of  chocolate^ 

One  farthing  is  the  rate, 
You  drink  it  through  a  straw ^  a  straw,  a  straw  P^ 

Oh,  of  all  sentences. 

Piercingly  incomplete  1 
Why  did  you  teach  that  fatal  mouth  to  draw. 

Child,  impermissible  awe 

86 


From  your  old  trivialness  ? 

Why  have  you  done  me  this 

Most  unsustainable  wrong, 

And  into  Death's  control 
Betrayed  the  secret  places  of  my  soul  ? 

Teaching  him  that  his  lips, 
Uttering  their  native  earthquake  and  eclipse. 

Could  never  so  avail 
To  rend  from  hem  to  hem  the  ultimate  veil 

Of  this  most  desolate 
Spirit,  and  leave  it  stripped  and  desecrate, — 

Nay,  never  so  have  wrung 
From  eyes  and  speech  weakness  unmanned,  unmeet ; 
As  when  his  terrible  dotage  to  repeat 
Its  little  lesson  learneth  at  your  feet ; 

As  when  he  sits  among 

His  sepulchres,  to  play 
With  broken  toys  your  hand  has  cast  away, 
With  derelict  trinkets  of  the  darling  young. 
Why  have  you  taught  —  that  he  might  so  complete 

His  awful  panoply 

From  your  cast  playthings  —  why, 
This  dreadful  childish  babble  to  his  tongue, 
Dreadful  and  sweet  ? 


87 


ODES 


NOTE 

I  The  Victorian  Ode  was  written  for  Jubilee  Day, 
London,  1897,  and  is  from  the  pamphlet  edition, 
"  Printed  for  private  circulation  at  The  Palace 
Court  Press,  1897."  FcapSvo.  Wrappers.  Pp.14. 
II  The  Nineteenth  Century  ode  Appeared  in  Tbe  Acad- 
emy for  December  29,  1900. 
Ill  The  ode  on  Cecil  Rhodes  is  taken  from  The  Academy 
and  Literature  for  April  12,  1902. 


VICTORIAN  ODE 

NIGHT;  and  the  street  a  corpse  beneath  the  moon, 
Upon  the  threshold  of  the  jubilant  day 
That  was  to  follow  soon  ; 
Thickened  with  inundating  dark 

'Gainst  which  the  drowning  lamps  kept  struggle  ;  pole 
And  plank  cast  rigid  shadows  ;  't  was  a  stark 
Thing  waiting  for  its  soul, 
The  bones  of  the  preluded  pomp.     I  saw 
In  the  cloud-sullied  moon  a  pale  array, 
A  lengthened  apparition,  slowly  draw  ; 
And  as  it  came. 

Brake  all  the  street  in  phantom  flame 
Of  flag  and  flower  and  hanging,  shadowy  show 
Of  the  to-morrow's  glories,  as  might  suit 
A  pageant  of  the  dead ;  and  spectral  bruit 
I  heard,  where  stood  the  dead  to  watch  the  dead. 
The  long  Victorian  line  that  passed  with  printless  tread. 
First  went  the  holy  poets,  two  on  two, 
And  music,  sown  along  the  hardened  ground, 
Budded  like  frequence  of  glad  daisies,  where 


91 


Those  sacred  feet  did  fare  ; 

Arcadian  pipe,  and  psaltery,  around, 

And  stringed  viol,  sound 

To  make  for  them  melodious  due. 

In  the  first  twain  of  those  great  ranks  of  death 

Went  one,  the  impress  recent  on  his  hair 

Where  it  was  dinted  by  the  laureate  wreath : 

Who  sang  those  goddesses  with  splendours  bare 

On  Ida  hill,  before  the  Trojan  boy ; 

And  many  a  lovely  lay, 

Where  Beauty  did  her  beauties  un array 

In  conscious  song.     I  saw  young  Love  his  plumes  deploy, 

And  shake  their  shivering  lustres,  till  the  night 

Was  sprinkled  and  bedropt  with  starry  play 

Of  versicoloured  light, 

To  see  that  poet  pass  who  sang  him  well ; 

And  I  could  hear  his  heart 

Throb  like  the  after-vibrance  of  a  bell. 

A  Strength  beside  this  Beauty,  Browning  went. 

With  shrewd  looks  and  intent. 

And  meditating  still  some  gnarlbd  theme. 

Then  came,  somewhat  apart. 

In  a  fastidious  dream, 

Arnold,  with  a  half-discontented  calm. 

Binding  up  wounds,  but  pouring  in  no  balm. 

The  fervid  breathing  of  Elizabeth 

Broke  on  Christina's  gentle-taken  breath. 

Rossetti,  whose  heart  stirred  within  his  breast 

Like  lightning  in  a  cloud,  a  spirit  without  rest. 

Came  on  disranked ;  Song's  hand  was  in  his  hair, 

92 


Lest  Art  should  have  withdrawn  him  from  the  band, 

Save  for  her  strong  command ; 

And  in  his  eyes  high  Sadness  made  its  lair. 

Last  came  a  shadow  tall,  with  drooping  lid. 

Which  yet  not  hid 

The  steel-like  flashing  of  his  arm^d  glance ; 

Alone  he  did  advance, 

And  all  the  throngs  gave  room 

For  one  that  looked  with  such  a  captain's  mien : 

A  scornful  smile  lay  keen 

On  lips  that,  living,  prophesied  of  doom. 

His  one  hand  held  a  lightning-bolt,  the  other 

A  cup  of  milk  and  honey  blent  with  fire ; 

It  seemed  as  in  that  quire 

He  had  not,  nor  desired  not,  any  brother. 

A  space  his  alien  eye  surveyed  the  pride 

Of  meditated  pomp,  as  one  that  much 

Disdained  the  sight,  methought ;  then  at  a  touch, 

He  turned  the  heel,  and  sought  with  shadowy  stride 

His  station  in  the  dim, 

Where  the  sole-thoughted  Dante  waited  him. 

What  throngs  illustrious  next,  of  Art  and  Prose, 

Too  long  to  tell ;  but'other  music  rose 

When  came  the  sabre's  children :  they  who  led 

The  iron-throated  harmonies  of  war, 

The  march  resounding  of  the  armM  line, 

And  measured  movement  of  battalia : 

Accompanied  their  tread 

No  harps,  no  pipes  of  soft  Arcadia, 

93 


But  —  borne  to  me  afar  — 

The  tramp  of  squadrons,  and  the  bursting  mine, 

The  shock  of  steel,  the  volleying  rifle-crack, 

And  echoes  out  of  ancient  battles  dead. 

So  Cawnpore  unto  Alma  thundered  back, 

And  Delhi's  cannon  roared  to  Gujerat : 

Carnage  through  all  those  iron  vents  gave  out 

Her  thousand-mouthed  shout. 

As  balefire  answering  balefire  is  unfurled. 

From  mountain-peaks,  to  tell  the  foe's  approaches. 

So  ran  that  battle-clangour  round  the  world, 

From  famous  field  to  field 

So  that  reverberated  war  was  tossed  ; 

And  —  in  the  distance  lost  — 

Across  the  plains  of  France  and  hills  of  Spain 

It  swelled  once  more  to  birth, 

And  broke  on  me  again. 

The  voice  of  England's  glories  girdling  in  the  earth. 

It  caught  like  fire  the  main, 

Where  rending  planks  were  heard,  and  broadsides  pealed. 

That  shook  were  all  the  seas. 

Which  feared,  and  thought  on  Nelson.     For  with  them 

That  struck  the  Russ,  that  brake  the  Mutineer, 

And  smote  the  stiff  Sikh  to  his  knee, —  with  these 

Came  they  that  kept  our  England's  sea-swept  hem, 

And  held  afar  from  her  the  foreign  fear. 

After  them  came 

They  who  pushed  back  the  ocean  of  the  Unknown, 

And  fenced  some  strand  of  knowledge  for  our  own 

94 


Against  the  outgoing  sea 

Of  ebbing  mystery ; 

And  on  their  banner  "  Science  "  blazoned  shone. 

The  rear  were  they  that  wore  the  statesman's  fame, 

From  Melbourne,  to 

The  arcane  face  of  the  much-wrinkled  Jew. 

Lo,  in  this  day  we  keep  the  yesterdays, 

And  those  great  dead  of  the  Victorian  line. 

They  passed,  they  passed,  but  cannot  pass  away, 

For  England  feels  them  in  her  blood  like  wine. 

She  was  their  mother,  and  she  is  their  daughter. 

This  Lady  of  the  water. 

And  from  their  loins  she  draws  the  greatness  which  they  were. 

And  still  their  wisdom  sways, 

Their  power  lives  in  her. 

Their  thews  it  is,  England,  that  lift  thy  sword. 

They  are  the  splendour,  England,  in  thy  song. 

They  sit  unbidden  at  thy  council-board, 

Their  fame  doth  compass  all  thy  coasts  from  wrong. 

And  in  thy  sinews  they  are  strong. 

Their  absence  is  a  presence  and  a  guest 

In  this  day's  feast ; 

This  living  feast  is  also  of  the  dead. 

And  this,  O  England,  is  thine  All  Souls'  Day. 

And  when  thy  cities  flake  the  night  with  flames, 

Thy  proudest  torches  yet  shall  be  their  names. 

O  royal  England  I  happy  child 
Of  such  a  more  than  regal  line ; 
Be  it  said 

95 


Fair  right  of  jubilee  is  thine  ; 

And  surely  thou  art  unbeguiled 

If  thou  keep  with  mirth  and  play, 

With  dance,  and  jollity,  and  praise, 

Such  a  To-day  which  sums  such  Yesterdays. 

Pour  to  the  joyless  ones  thy  joy,  thy  oil 

And  wine  to  such  as  faint  and  toil. 

And  let  thy  vales  make  haste  to  be  more  green 

Than  any  vales  are  seen 

In  less  auspicious  lands, 

And  let  thy  trees  clap  all  their  leafy  hands, 

And  let  thy  flowers  be  gladder  far  of  hue 

Than  flowers  of  other  regions  may ; 

Let  the  rose,  with  her  fragrance  sweetened  through, 

Flush  as  young  maidens  do, 

With  their  own  inward  blissfulness  at  play. 

And  let  the  sky  twinkle  an  eagerer  blue 

Over  our  English  isle 

Than  any  otherwhere  ; 

Till  strangers  shall  behold,  and  own  that  she  is  fair. 

Play  up,  play  up,  ye  birds  of  minstrel  June, 

Play  up  your  reel,  play  up  your  giddiest  spring. 

And  trouble  every  tree  with  lusty  tune, 

Whereto  our  hearts  shall  dance 

For  overmuch  pleasance. 

And  children's  running  make  the  earth  to  sing. 

And  ye  soft  winds,  and  ye  white-fingered  beams, 

Aid  ye  her  to  invest, 

Our  queenly  England,  in  all  circumstance 

Of  fair  and  feat  adorning  to  be  drest ; 

96 


Kirtled  in  jocund  green, 

Which  does  befit  a  Queen, 

And  like  our  spirits  cast  forth  lively  gleams  : 

And  let  her  robe  be  goodly  garlanded 

With  store  of  florets  white  and  florets  red, 

With  store  of  florets  white  and  florets  gold, 

A  fair  thing  to  behold ; 

Intrailed  with  the  white  blossom  and  the  blue, 

A  seemly  thing  to  view  ! 

And  thereunto, 

Set  over  all  a  woof  of  lawny  air, 

From  her  head  wavering  to  her  sea-shod  feet. 

Which  shall  her  lovely  beauty  well  complete. 

And  grace  her  much  to  wear. 

Lo,  she  is  dressed,  and  lo,  she  cometh  forth. 

Our  stately  Lady  of  the  North ; 

Lo,  how  she  doth  advance, 

In  her  most  sovereign  eye  regard  of  puissance, 

And  tiar'd  with  conquest  her  prevailing  brow, 

While  nations  to  her  bow. 

Come  hither,  proud  and  ancient  East, 

Gather  ye  to  this  Lady  of  the  North, 

And  sit  down  with  her  at  her  solemn  feast, 

Upon  this  culminant  day  of  all  her  days ; 

For  ye  have  heard  the  thunder  of  her  goings-forth, 

And  wonder  of  her  large  imperial  ways. 

Let  India  send  her  turbans,  and  Japan 

Her  pictured  vests  from  that  remotest  isle 

Seated  in  the  antechambers  of  the  Sun : 


97 


And  let  her  Western  sisters  for  a  while 

Remit  long  envy  and  disunion, 

And  take  in  peace 

Her  hand  behind  the  buckler  of  her  seas, 

'Gainst  which  their  wrath  has  splintered ;  come,  for  she 

Her  hand  ungauntlets  in  mild  amity. 

Victoria !     Queen,  whose  name  is  victory, 

Whose  woman's  nature  sorteth  best  with  peace, 

Bid  thou  the  cloud  of  war  to  cease 

Which  ever  round  thy  wide-girt  empery 

Fumes,  like  to  smoke  about  a  burning  brand, 

Telling  the  energies  which  keep  within 

The  light  unquenched,  as  England's  light  shall  be ; 

And  let  this  day  hear  only  peaceful  din. 

For,  queenly  woman,  thou  art  more  than  woman  ; 

Thy  name  the  often-struck  barbarian  shuns ; 

Thou  art  the  fear  of  England  to  her  foemen. 

The  love  of  England  to  her  sons. 

And  this  thy  glorious  day  is  England's ;  who 

Can  separate  the  two  ? 

She  joys  thy  joys  and  weeps  thy  tears, 

And  she  is  one  with  all  thy  moods ; 

Thy  story  is  the  tale  of  England's  years. 

And  big  with  all  her  ills,  and  all  her  stately  goods. 

Now  unto  thee 

The  plenitude  of  the  glories  thou  didst  sow 

Is  garnered  up  in  prosperous  memory ; 

And,  for  the  perfect  evening  of  thy  day. 

An  untumultuous  bliss,  serenely  gay, 

Sweetened  with  silence  of  the  after-glow. 

98 


i 


Nor  does  the  joyous  shout 

Which  all  our  lips  give  out 

Jar  on  that  quietude ;  more  than  may  do 

A  radiant  childish  crew, 

With  well-accordant  discord  fretting  the  soft  hour, 

Whose  hair  is  yellowed  by  the  sinking  blaze 

Over  a  low-mouthed  sea.     Exult,  yet  be  not  twirled, 

England,  by  gusts  of  mere 

Blind  and  insensate  lightness ;  neither  fear 

The  vastness  of  thy  shadow  on  the  world. 

If  in  the  East 

Still  strains  against  its  leash  the  unglutted  beast 

Of  War ;  if  yet  the  cannon's  lip  be  warm  ; 

Thou,  whom  these  portents  warn  but  not  alarm, 

Feastest,  but  with  thy  hand  upon  the  sword. 

As  fits  a  warrior  race. 

Not  like  the  Saxon  fools  of  olden  days. 

With  the  mead  dripping  from  the  hairy  mouth. 

While  all  the  South 

Filled  with  the  shaven  faces  of  the  Norman  horde. 


99 


II 

THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

AS,  fore-announced  by  threat  of  flame  and  smoke, 
Out  of  the  night's  lair  broke 
The  sun  among  the  startled  stars,  whose  blood 
Looses  its  slow  bright  flood 
Beneath  the  radiant  onset  of  the  sun ; 
So  crouches  he  anon. 

With  nostrils  breathing  threat  of  smoke  and  flame, 
Back  to  the  lairing  night  wherefrom  he  came. 

And  who  is  She, 

With  cloudy  battle  smoking  round  her  feet, 

That  issues  through  the  exit-doors  of  death ; 

And  at  the  alternate  limit  of  her  path, 

Where  first  her  nascent  footsteps  troubled  day, 

Forgotten  tumult  curls  itself  away  ? 

Who  is  she  that  rose 

Tumultuous,  and  in  tumult  goes  ? 

This  is  she 

That  rose  'midst  dust  of  a  down-tumbled  world, 

And  dies  with  rumour  on  the  air 

Of  preparation 

For  a  more  ample  devastation. 

And  death  of  ancient  fairness  no  more  fair. 

First  when  she  knew  the  day. 

The  holy  poets  sung  her  on  her  way. 


\ 


The  high,  clear  band  that  takes 

Its  name  from  heaven-acquainted  mountain-lakes  ; 

And  he 

That  like  a  star  set  in  Italian  sea ; 

And  he  that  mangled  by  the  jaws  of  our 

Fierce  London,  from  all  frets 

Lies  balmed  in  Roman  violets. 

And  other  names  of  power, 

Too  recent  but  for  worship  and  regret, 

On  whom  the  tears  lie  wet. 

But  not  to  these 

She  gave  her  heart ;  her  heart  she  gave 

To  the  blind  worm  that  bores  the  mould, 

Bloodless,  pertinacious,  cold, 

Unweeting  what  itself  upturns. 

The  seer  and  prophet  of  the  grave. 

It  reared  its  head  from  off  the  earth 

(Which  gives  it  life  and  gave  it  birth) 

And  placed  upon  its  eyeless  head  a  crown. 

And  all  the  peoples  in  their  turns 

Before  the  blind  worm  bowed  them  down. 

Yet,  crowned  beyond  its  due, 

Working  dull  way  by  obdurate,  slow  degrees, 

It  is  a  thing  of  sightless  prophecies ; 

And  glories,  past  its  own  conceit. 

Attend  to  crown 

Its  travail,  when  the  mounded  time  is  meet. 

Nor  measured,  fit  renown. 

When  that  hour  paces  forth, 

lOI 


Shall  overlook  those  workers  of  the  North, 

And  West,  those  patient  Darwins  who  forthdrew 

From  humble  dust  what  truth  they  knew. 

And  greater  than  they  knew,  not  knowing  all  they  knew. 

Yet  was  their  knowledge  in  its  scope  a  Might, 

Strong  and  true  souls  to  measure  of  their  sight. 

Behold  the  broad  globe  in  their  hands  comprest, 

As  a  boy  kneads  a  pellet,  till  the  East 

Looks  in  the  eyes  o'  the  West ; 

And  as  guest  whispers  guest 

That  counters  him  at  feast, 

The  Northern  mouth 

Leans  to  the  attent  ear  of  the  bended  South. 

The  fur-skinned  garb  justling  the  northern  bear 

Crosses  the  threshold  where. 

With  linen  wisp  girt  on. 

Drowses  the  next-door  neighbour  of  the  sun. 

Such  their  laborious  worth 

To  change  the  old  face  of  the  wonted  earth. 

Nor  were  they  all  o'  the  dust ;  as  witness  may 

Davy  and  Faraday ; 

And  they 

Who  clomb  the  cars 

And  learned  to  rein  the  chariots  of  the  stars ;  ^ 

Or  who  in  night's  dark  waters  dipt  their  hands 

To  sift  the  hid  gold  from  its  sands ;  ^ 

And  theirs  the  greatest  gift,  who  drew  to  light 

I  Measuring  the  stars'  orbits. 

a  Discovery  of  new  stars.  ;      ^n  ijyi  s?iiJl  - 

1 02 


By  their  sciential  might, 

The  secret  ladder,  wherethrough  all  things  climb 

Upward  from  the  primeval  slime.' 

Nor  less  we  praise 

Him  that  with  burnished  tube  betrays 

The  multitudinous  diminutive 

Recessed  in  virtual  night 

Below  the  surface-seas  of  sight ; 

Him  whose  enchanted  window  gives 

Upon  the  populated  ways 

Where  the  shy  universes  live 

Ambushed  beyond  the  unapprehending  gaze. 

The  dusted  anther's  globe  of  spiky  stars ; 

The  beetle  flashing  in  his  minute  mail 

Of  green  and  golden  scale  ; 

And  every  water-drop  a-sting  with  writhing  wars. 

The  unnoted  green  scale  cleaving  to  the  moist  earth's  face 

Behold  disclosed  a  conjugal  embrace, 

And  womb  — 

Submitting  to  the  tomb  — 

That  sprouts  its  lusty  issue  :  ^  everywhere  conjoins 

Either  glad  sex,  and  from  unguessed-at  loins 

Breeds  in  an  opulent  ease 

The  liberal  earth's  increase  ; 

Such  Valentine's  sweet  unsurmisbd  diocese. 

1  Evolution. 

2  The  prothallus  of  the  fern,  for  example ;   which  contains   in 
itself  the  two  sexes,  and  decays  as  the  young  fern  sprouts  from  it. 


Nor,  dying  Lady,  of  the  sons 

Whom  proudly  owns 

Thy  valedictory  and  difficult  breath, 

The  least  are  they  who  followed  Death 

Into  his  obscure  fastnesses, 

Tracked  to  her  secret  lair  Disease  — 

Under  the  candid-seeming  and  confederate  Day 

Venoming  the  air's  pure  lips  to  kiss  and  to  betray. 

Who  foiled  the  ancient  Tyrant's  grey  design 

Unfathomed  long,  and  brake  his  dusty  toils, 

Spoiling  him  of  his  spoils. 

And  man,  the  loud  dull  fly,  loosed  from  his  woven  line. 

Such  triumph  theirs  who  at  the  destined  term 

Descried  the  arrow  flying  in  the  day  — 

The  age-long  hidden  germ  — 

And  threw  their  prescient  shield  before  its  deadly  way. 

Thou,  spacious  Century  ! 

Hast  seen  the  Western  knee 

Set  on  the  Asian  neck, 

The  dusky  Africa 

Kneel  to  imperial  Europe's  beck  ; 

And  that  refused  head  plucked  to  the  day 

Of  the  close-hooded  Nile. 

Hast  seen  the  West  for  its  permitted  while 

Stand  mistress-wise  and  tutelar 

To  the  grey  nations  dreaming  on  their  days  afar, 

From  old  forgotten  war 

Folding  hands  whence  has  slid  disused  rule ; 

The  while,  unprescient,  in  her  regent  school 

104 


She  shapes  the  ample  days  and  things  to  be, 

And  large  new  empery. 

Thence  Asia  shall  be  brought  to  bed 

Of  dominations  yet  undreamed  ; 

Narrow-eyed  Egypt  lift  again  the  head 

Whereon  the  far-seen  crown  Nilotic  gleamed. 

Thou  'st  seen  the  Saxon  horde  whose  veins  run  brine, 

Spawned  of  the  salt  wave,  wet  with  the  salt  breeze. 

Their  sails  combine. 

Lash  their  bold  prows  together,  and  turn  swords 

Against  the  world's  knit  hordes ; 

The  whelps  repeat  the  lioness'  roar  athwart  the  windy  seas. 

Yet  let  it  grieve,  grey  Dame, 

Thy  passing  spirit,  God  wot, 

Thou  wast  half-hearted,  wishing  peace,  but  not 

The  means  of  it.     The  avaricious  flame 

Thou  'st  fanned,  which  thou  should'st  tame  : 

Cluck'dst  thy  wide  brood  beneath  thy  mothering  plumes, 

And  coo'dst  them  from  their  fumes. 

Stretched  necks  provocative,  and  throats 

Ruffled  with  challenging  notes  ; 

Yet  all  didst  mar 

Flattering  the  too-much-pampered  Boy  of  War  : 

Whence  the  far-jetting  engine,  and  the  globe 

In  labour  with  her  iron  progeny, — 

Infernal  litter  of  sudden-whelped  deaths. 

Vomiting  venomous  breaths ; 

Thicker  than  driven  dust  of  testy  March 

When  the  blown  flood  o'erswells, 

105 


The  armbd  parallels 

Of  the  long  nations'  columned  march ; 

The  growl  as  of  long  surf  that  draweth  back 

Half  a  beach  in  its  rattling  track, 

When  like  a  tiger-cat 

The  angry  rifle  spat 

Its  fury  in  the  opposing  foemen's  eyes  ;  — 

These  are  thy  consummating  victories, 

For  this  hast  thou  been  troubled  to  be  wise ! 

And  now  what  child  is  this  upon  thy  lap, 

Born  in  the  red  glow  of  relighted  war  ? 

That  draws  Bellona's  pap. 

Fierce  foster-mother  ;  does  already  stare 

With  mimicked  dark  regard 

And  copied  threat  of  brow  whose  trick  it  took  from  her  ? 

The  twentieth  of  Time's  loins,  since  that 

Which  in  the  quiet  snows  of  Bethlehem  he  begat. 

Ah !  born,  grey  mother,  in  an  hour  ill-starred, 

After  the  day  of  blood  and  night  of  fate, 

Shall  it  survive  with  brow  no  longer  marred, 

Lip  no  more  wry  with  hate ; 

With  all  thou  hadst  of  good. 

But  from  its  blood 

Washed  thine  hereditary  ill. 

Yet  thy  child  still  ? 


i 


06 


1 


Ill 

CECIL  RHODES » 

DIED    MARCH    26,    I902 

THEY  that  mis-said 
Tliis  man  yet  living,  praise  him  dead. 
And  I  too  praise,  yet  not  the  baser  things 
Wherewith  the  market  and  the  tavern  rings. 
Not  that  high  things  for  gold, 
He  held,  were  bought  and  sold, 
That  statecraft's  means  approved  are  by  the  end  ; 
Not  for  all  which  commands 
The  loud  world's  clapping  hands, 
To  which  cheap  press  and  cheaper  patriots  bend  ; 
But  for  the  dreams, 
For  those  impossible  gleams 
He  half  made  possible ;  for  that  he  was 
Visioner  of  vision  in  a  most  sordid  day : 
This  draws 
Back  to  me  song  long  alien  and  astray. 

In  dreams  what  did  he  not. 

Wider  than  his  wide  deeds  ?   In  dreams  he  wrought 

I  "  Once  or  twice  in  those  seven  years  of  our  intercourse 
a  flame  of  his  old  poetic  fire  blazed  out,  and  once  I  was  able 
to  divert  the  flame  into  the  pages  of  The  Academy.  When 
Cecil  Rhodes  died — that  great  dreamer  and  great  man  of 
action  —  I  telegraphed  to  Thompson  to  hasten  to  the  office. 
That  was  on  a  Monday.  He  appeared  on  the  Tuesday.  I 
asked  him  point  blank  if  he  would  write  an  ode  on  Cecil 

107 


What  the  old  world's  long  livers  must  in  act  forego. 

From  the  Zambesi  to  the  Limpopo 

He  the  many-languaged  land 

Took  with  his  large  compacting  hand 

And  pressed  into  a  nation  :  'thwart  the  accurst 

And  lion-'larumed  ways, 

Where  the  lean-fingered  Thirst 

Wrings  at  the  throat,  and  Famine  strips  the  bone  ; 

A  tawny  land,  with  sun  at  sullen  gaze, 

And  all  above  a  cope  of  heated  stone ; 

He  heard  the  shirted  miner's  rough  halloo 

Call  up  the  mosqubd  Cairene ;  harkened  clear 

The  Cairene's  far-off  summons  sounding  through 

The  sea's  long  noises  to  the  Capeman's  ear. 

Rhodes  for  the  next  issue  of  the  paper,  and  without  waiting 
for  his  refusal  talked  Rhodes  to  him  for  half  an  hour,  roused 
his  enthusiasm,  and  he  departed  with  a  half  promise  to 
deliver  the  ode  on  Thursday  morning.  Thursday  came  and 
nearly  passed.  I  sent  him  three  telegrams,  but  received  no 
answer.  It  was  necessary  to  go  to  press  at  eight  o'clock. 
At  half  past  six  he  arrived,  and  proceeded  to  extract  from 
his  pockets  a  dozen  and  more  scraps  of  crumpled  paper,  each 
containing  a  fragment  of  the  ode.  I  pieced  them  together, 
sent  the  blurred  manuscript  to  the  printers,  gave  him  money 
for  his  dinner,  and  exacted  a  promise  that  he  would  return  in 
an  hour  to  read  the  proof.  He  returned  dazed  and  incoher- 
ent, read  the  proof  standing  and  swaying  as  he  read,  and 
murmured:  'It 's  all  right.'  It  was  all  right.  I  am  prouder 
of  having  published  that  ode  than  of  anything  else  that  The 
Academy  ever  contained." —  C.  Lewis  Hind  (former  editor 
of  the  London  Academy)^  in  Harper's  Weekly^  January  i8, 
1908. 

108 


He  saw  the  Teuton  and  the  Saxon  grip 

Hands  round  the  warded  world,  and  bid  it  rock, 

While  they  did  watch  its  cradle.     Like  a  ship 

It  swung,  whileas  the  cabined  inmates  slept. 

Secure  their  peace  was  kept. 

Such  arms  of  warranty  about  them  lock. 

Ophir »  he  saw,  her  long-ungazed-at  gold. 

Stirred  from  its  deep. 

And  often-centuried  sleep, 

Wink  at  the  new  Sun  in  an  English  hold. 

England,  from  Afric's  swarthy  loins 

Drawing  fecundity, 

Wax  to  the  South  and  North, 

To  East  and  West  increase  her  puissant  goings-forth. 

And  strike  young  emperies,  like  coins. 

In  her  own  regent  effigy. 

He  saw  the  three-branched  Teuton  hold  the  sides 

Of  the  round  world,  and  part  it  as  a  dish 

Whereof  to  each  his  wish 

The  amity  of  the  full  feast  decides. 

So  large  his  dreams,  so  little  come  to  act ! 

Who  must  call  on  the  cannon  to  compact 

The  hard  Dutch-stubborned  land, 

Seditious  even  to  such  a  potent  hand. 

Who  grasped  and  held  his  Ophir :  held,  no  less. 

The  Northern  ways,  but  never  lived  to  see 

The  wing-foot  messages 

Dart  from  the  Delta  to  the  Southern  Sea. 

I  Rhodesia,  according  to  some  modern  views. 
109 


Who,  confident  of  gold, 

A  leaner  on  the  statesman's  arts 

And  the  unmartial  conquests  of  the  marts, 

Died  with  the  sound  of  battle  round  him  rolled, 

And  rumour  of  battle  in  all  nations'  hearts. 

Dying,  saw  his  life  a  thing 

Of  large  beginnings  ;  and  for  young 

Hands  yet  untrained  the  harvesting, 

Amid  the  iniquitous  years  if  harvest  sprung. 

So  in  his  death  he  sowed  himself  anew ; 

Cast  his  intents  over  the  grave  to  strike 

In  the  left  world  of  livers  living  roots. 

And  banyan-like, 

From  his  one  tree  raise  up  a  wood  of  shoots. 

The  indestructible  intents  which  drew 

Their  sap  from  him. 

Thus,  with  a  purpose  grim, 

Into  strange  lands  and  hostile  yet  he  threw, 

That  there  might  be 

From  him  throughout  the  earth  posterity : 

And  so  did  he  — 

Like  to  a  smouldering  fire  by  wind-blasts  swirled  — 

His  dying  embers  strew  to  kindle  all  the  world. 

Yet  not  for  this  I  praise 

The  ending  of  his  strenuous  days  ; 

No,  not  alone  that  still 

Beyond  the  grave  stretched  that  imperial  Will. 

But  that  Death  seems 

To  set  the  gateway  wide  to  ampler  dreams ; 


Yea,  yet  he  dreams  upon  Matoppo  hill, 

The  while  the  German  and  the  Saxon  see, 

And  seeing,  wonder, 

The  spacious  dreams  take  shape  and  be, 

As  at  compulsion  of  his  sleep  thereunder. 

Lo,  young  America  at  the  Mother's  knee, 

Unlearning  centuried  hate, 

For  love's  more  blest  extreme ; 

And  this  is  in  his  dream, 

And  sure  the  dream  is  great. 

Lo,  Colonies  on  Colonies, 

The  furred  Canadian  and  the  digger's  shirt. 

To  the  one  Mother's  skirt 

Cling,  in  the  lore  of  Empire  to  be  wise ; 

A  hundred  wheels  a-turn 

All  to  one  end  —  that  England's  sons  may  learn 

The  glory  of  their  sonship,  the  supreme 

Worth  that  befits  the  heirs  of  such  estate. 

All  these  are  in  his  dream, 

And  sure  the  dream  is  great. 

So,  to  the  last 

A  visionary  vast. 

The  aspirant  soul  would  have  the  body  lie 

Among  the  hills  immovably  exalt 

As  he  above  the  crowd  that  haste  and  halt, 

"  Upon  that  hill  which  I 

Called  '  View  of  All  the  World  ; '"  to  show  thereby 

That  still  his  unappeasable  desires 

Beneath  his  feet  surveyed  the  peoples  and  empires. 


Dreams,  haply  of  scant  worth, 

Bound  by  our  little  thumb-ring  of  an  earth ; 

Yet  an  exalted  thing 

By  the  gross  search  for  food  and  raimenting. 

So  in  his  own  Matoppos,  high,  aloof, 

The  elements  for  roof, 

Claiming  his  mountain  kindred,  and  secure, 

Within  that  sepulture 

Stern  like  himself  and  unadorned. 

From  the  loud  multitude  he  ruled  and  scorned. 

There  let  him  cease  from  breath, — 

Alone  in  crowded  life,  not  lonelier  in  death. 


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